Why are transitions to democracy so violence-prone?
I agree the assertion that newly formed governments in Egypt and Libya are violence prone. The reason why they confront instability is both of them are in the first stage of democratization in which civil war are more than twice likely to happen than stable regimes. (Mansfield and Snyder)To rebuild stability, the new elites that are divided into different fractions should commitment to peace agreement by institutionalizing the elections. However, there are still challenges to realize this aim.
What is causing the instability?
As we all know Egypt and Libya just overthrew the autocracy regime and are on their roads to build new democratic countries. However, during this period the new fractions that beat the old elites tend to devolve conflicts into civil war because of the lack of institutional means to regulate or suppress the factional strife. (Mansfield and Snyder)Currently, the conflicts between the military council and Muslim Brother and militias that once formed to fight Colonel Qaddafi beginning to attack the interim leader to demand payment for their work in fighting the forces of Qaddafi are results of the lack of institutional means. Additionally, instability also happens when the loser is not willing to accept the outcome of the voting or the winner is attempt to claim authoritarian control after the vote. (Mansfield and Snyder) President Mohamed Morsi issuing a decree granting himself broad powers above any court and the military council’s claim of limit the powers of any new government are unstabilizing events that can escalate to wars if there is no institutionalized politics power sharing systems.(New York Times)
What conditions would be necessary to rebuild stability?
I argue that in order to rebuild stability the new elites need strong rule-of-law institutions (Lindberg 2006) and third-party monitoring. Without the institutions, conflicts between new fractions will be so costly that both sides at last tend to resolve to war since the winning party tend to behavior like “tyranny of the majority” while the losing party is always unwilling to accept the outcome and try to use more violent ways to gain politics claim. However, even if both fractions get to reach agreement, there still are commitment problems that the fractions cannot credibly commit to the agreement unless there is a strong third party who can monitor and force both parties to keep their commitments.
What are the challenges for interim Egyptian and Libyan leadership?
For the interim Egyptian and Libyan leadership, one of the biggest challenges is to go through the first and second elections without big conflicts because according to Africanist Staffan Lindberg, politics will be more regularized after three non-violent elections and every elections can consolidate power and regulate the politics. (Mansfield and Snyder) However, the first election is the period