Just days after protests began in the northwestern Kyrgyz city of Talas it appears that the opposition has won a stunning victory. If the Twitter pundits (Twitdits?) are to be believed, the popular coup in Bishkek has much broader significance. According to the computer savvy masses, Tulip Revolution II should serve as a model for every other nascent democratization movement from Iran ("that's how you do it #iranianelection" seems to be a common sentiment) to Azerbaijan.

Before everyone gets carried away, let’s take a step back and review. The events in Kyrgyzstan are many things, but a model is not one of them. Here are four reasons why:

1. The Kyrgyz have a strong history of staging effective protests. In 1993, protests brought down former Prime Minister Tursunbek Chyngyshev.  In 2002, protesters forced then President Akayev to begin the process of reforming the country’s constitution. And of course there is the 2005 Tulip Revolution, which current opposition leader Roza Otunbaeva played a key role in organizing. It’s much easier to get a crowd together when people believe they are likely to succeed.

2. Kyrgyzstan lacks the natural resource wealth that allows governments in many other authoritarian or semi-authoritarian states to effectively quell internal dissent. And while I hesitate to use the word “easier” when talking about coups and revolutions in the former Soviet Union, it is clear that the Bakiyev regime was vulnerable because of it.

3. The protesters were backed by a segment of the Kyrgyzstan’s political elite and if reports out of Bishkek are true they were able to quickly co-opt members of the security services. 

4. The Bakiyev government wasn't particularly bright. Deciding to increase utility prices by 200% while publicly flaunting your corruption-based wealth  is a sure way to stir up popular unrest.

-Evan

Siegle et al contend that democracies do a better job of development than autocracies- except for the case of East Asia.  They summarily dismiss this unwelcome fact:

"Although exceptional cases exist [East Asia], it is the preponderance of experience that should guide development policy [and democracies have a better record]."

I'm afraid that Siegle et al are missing the forest for the trees.  The issue is not what kind of government these countries had, but the type of economy that the government supported.  The Asian tigers committed themselves to introducing capitalism.  India, a democracy, suffered from the "Hindu rate of growth" until the 1990s, when Monmohan Singh's reforms turned India capitalist.  China, an autocracy, did not experience exponential growth until after Deng Xaioping's capitalist reforms.  

Certainly I am cherry-picking examples.  But I believe it's clear that countries with properly functioning capitalist systems develop fastest, regardless of the form of government.  This is what really separates the former dictatorships of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore (still a one-party state), and Indonesia, from the regimes in North Korea, Laos, and Burma in terms of development.


- Jon

"Why Democracies Excel" by Joseph Siegle, Michael Weinstein, and Morton Halperin

Money quote: "Economic development makes democracy possible," asserts
the U.S. State Department’s Web site, subscribing to a highly
influential argument: that poor countries must develop economically
before they can democratize. But the historical data prove otherwise.
Poor democracies have grown at least as fast as poor autocracies and
have significantly outperformed the latter on most indicators of social
well-being. They have also done much better at avoiding catastrophes.
Dispelling the “development first, democracy later” argument is
critical not only because it is wrong but also because it has led to
atrocious policies—indeed, policies that have undermined international
efforts to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people
in the developing world."

The advent of new technology has often had a marked effect on societies and their political structures. The printing press, telegraph, radio, and  internet all brought the world closer together and facilitated the proliferation of ideas and by extension political change.

Enter Twitter. The micro-blogging service, according to its proponents, already redefined the way social movements organize in Moldova and Iran and it is set to liberate more closed societies as soon as they get reliable 3G networks.

Not so fast says Evgeny Morozov.

Morozov, in his recent Foreign Policy article, presents and debunks seven misconceptions about Twitter and its usefulness in authoritarian contexts. The truth, as Morozov artfully describes, is that Twitter is simply a tool and a poor one at that. It has far less potential than other social networking sites and can easily be turned against activist by a semi-internet-literate opponent.

Twitter represents more of a challenge to media gathering standards than to authoritarian governments.

-Evan