Accountability Gaps and the Popular Movements of 2011
Accountability Gaps and the Popular Movements of 2011
Zach Dorfman: Accountability Gaps and the Popular Movements of 2011
Beginning with the 2009 protests in Iran?a prelude to and, because of their failure, a cautionary event for the Arab Spring?there has been an eruption of popular movements spanning the Global North and South. From Spain, Italy, Greece, Israel, and the United States, to Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and Tunisia, millions have marched, encamped, gone on strike, chanted en masse, and occupied squares, parks, streets, and roundabouts. Considered collectively, the magnitude of all this activity is staggering. Not since the events leading to the breakup of the Soviet Union, and prior to that the momentous year of 1968, have so many people protested their government?s policies, and in some cases challenged the very legitimacy of these regimes.
Are these protests driven by the same kinds of popular grievances, rooted in the same kinds of government failures? There are widely divergent domestic situations in all of the countries where protests have occurred, but we should be open to drawing conclusions about what these movements may share, and what common elements may be driving them.
Given their populist tinge (from ?the people want the fall of the regime? in the Arab states to ?We are the 99 Percent? in the United States)?not to mention the biases of our democratic age?it would be easy to conclude that a drive for more democracy binds them together. But it?s not the idea of ?democracy? per se that unites these movements, so much as accountability more broadly. Different societies prioritize different values, but all demand that their government?s values remain at least partially congruent with their own. An unrepresentative government that contravenes its peoples? values or mores no longer seems accountable, which can threaten the legitimacy of a regime as a whole.
Accountability?the idea of a basic responsiveness of a regime to its people?thus functions as a kind of ?meta-value? in politics. If there is a single concept that links the Arab Spring protests to those in liberal democracies like the United States, it is this one. Accountability-oriented movements can be proto-democratic (because democracies possess more ?escape valves? for popular pressure than other forms of government, and by that very fact increase accountability), or have democratic ideals informing them (take for instance the neo-Athenian general assemblies at Zuccotti Park), but they don?t have to be democratic in intent, nor produce a truly democratic political system to successfully achieve their objectives, at least initially. Political theorists through the ages have presumed that some degree of accountability of the ruler toward the people was an important source of legitimacy, whether the form of government was monarchical, oligarchic, or democratic. When a political regime becomes too alienated, too corrupt, or too beholden to external powers or internal cliques, the people may revolt to correct this imbalance.
Take the case of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian produce vendor who self-immolated on December 17, 2010, sparking the overthrow of Zine El Abidine Ali. Bouazizi did not set himself ablaze for self-consciously ?political? reasons: his grievances?extortion and humiliation at the hands of local officials?were aimed at a system that was suffocating him. He desperately desired accountability. It was only when the local governor denied his request for an audience that Bouazizi resorted to burning himself. (Similar day-to-day humiliations were also a major factor in driving protesters to Cairo?s Tahrir Square.)
The protests in Libya that led to the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime had similar origins. They began in response to the arrest in Benghazi of Fathi Terbil, a human rights lawyer who represented families with relatives who were held in Libya?s execrable Abu Salim prison. In 1996 the Qaddafi regime slaughtered over 1,200 prisoners at Abu Salim. For years, family members had no idea their relatives had been murdered. In 2004 Qaddafi acknowledged the mass killing at Abu Salim, and promised a full investigation?which, unsurprisingly, never took place. It was these families, angered that the regime had halted Terbil?s efforts to achieve accountability for the massacre, that initiated the protests that led to the overthrow of the Qaddafi government.
But it isn?t simply opposition to authoritarianism that drove these protests across the Middle East. If it were, much larger protest movements would have developed in Oman, Jordan, and Morocco. Many of the Middle Eastern states that have so far managed to ward off sustained challenges to their legitimacy, like Oman and Jordan, are by no means democratic, but have made real efforts (usually funded by fossil fuel sales) at improving the lot of their people, and have allowed some tangible political freedoms. If the new Egyptian, Tunisian, and Libyan governments can introduce enough in the way of political and economic reforms, they may remain largely authoritarian without provoking further revolt.
Recent protest movements in wealthier, democratic states have also been tied to accountability. This summer protesters in Israel occupied part of Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv and organized massive marches countrywide, demanding greater social justice. The ambiguity of this general demand obscured the protesters? concrete concerns: that housing in Israel had become too expensive; that there was a serious job shortage, especially for the young; and that the Israeli political class, and in particular the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, had abandoned the Israeli welfare state in favor of a neoliberal economic order. So, too, in Spain: the indignados focused on massive youth unemployment, the injustice of government austerity measures, the rigidity of the Spanish political system, and the excessive influence of money in politics. In both of these countries, protesters believed that the dominant economic and political forces were totally unaccountable to the people, and were not acting in their interests.
In Greece and Italy, groups have also staged large protests against government austerity measures. The severe fiscal woes of these two countries, and their deep integration in the European economy, have severely weakened their ability to control their own economic restructuring. Rather, such efforts are largely dictated by technocratic international financial institutions such as the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, which are wholly unaccountable to the people whose lives they now affect. Moreover, domestic political leaders in Italy and Greece now appear increasingly subordinate to (and populated by) European technocrats. In November, for instance, groups in Italy marched in protest of the ?bankers? government.?
In the United States, Occupy Wall Street protesters also coalesced around accountability issues. Occupiers argued that the institutions behind the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression were not only not punished for their behavior but were subsequently bailed out with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, without preconditions or stipulations. But the unethical behavior of the banks is just part of what has driven protesters; they are also motivated by the belief that their government has become more accountable to the banks than to the electorate as a whole.
The grievances and sense of unaccountability driving protests in states like Israel, Spain, Greece, Italy, and the United States are obviously less severe than those in the autocratic Middle East, but present difficulties unique to mature liberal democracies. While mobilizing in these countries is easier because freedom of speech and assembly is less restricted, the appearance of political accountability?through regularly scheduled elections, comparatively low levels of corruption, and relatively robust civil liberties?can obscure the depths of the problems these societies face. It is easier to rally wide swaths of society to depose a dictator than to protest a judicial decision that equates money with free speech. It is more intuitive for millions to march for basic human dignity than against a nameless, faceless plutocracy. It is easier to bring a simmer to a boil, but also more dangerous for those involved. What an irony, then, that the more fundamental accountability issues facing protesters in authoritarian states may just be preludes to their less destructive, but more insidious, relatives.
