Impossible without promoting civil society

Means the Cassandras multiply appeals to deference: chaos will settle, the Islamists will win the last, the Suez canal will be blocked and Israel will be threatened by all its neighbours. Always remember that history is tragic! 1793 following 1789! Means, strongest, voices say that democracy is a European exception, it is of recent addition and it is unrealistic and naive to think that the model of the human rights will be universal. The European decline would indicate to the contrary that this idea is in the process of regression, least threatened. They are authoritarian systems that have the future before them, look at China! We hear, on the extreme left, the ultra-capitalisme of today fits far better dictators than Democrats for the reason that the economy is so uneven that it would apprehend the vote of the people. The demonstrators in Tunis and Cairo refute these theories. What happens is the birth of a civil society, of a third State, that opens a new era. The end of the fear and the emergence of the need for freedom in the Arab world must make fundamentally optimistic for the fate of the region and the world. Why

For historians of the economy, institutions are a key to the prosperity factor. In the Arab world, they are brakes. In an informative article (1), Eric Chaney, specialist in the history of the Muslim world, Professor at Harvard, says that Islamic civilizations have always directed share by an elite military and religious authorities, which have the "local communities control". It is striking to see that this sharing of power in two is found in the post-colonial Arab world until today: 22 countries, 350 million people, but that dictatorships or dynasties. No democracy except, officially, the Iraq, the Lebanon and Palestine... In recent years the Islamic power became powerful: the mullahs have been social work in poor areas that despots have deserted.

In Europe, continued Chaney, power is very different: it is exercised at three: the nobility, the Church and the cities (States that the third State will replace the cities during the Renaissance). While in the Arab world, the game two creates understanding and immobility, in Europe, there is an ongoing fight between the three and within power sometimes: between the King and the nobility for example. This relentless competition manifests itself in games of alliances and total "causes a positive evolution of the institutions", in particular for the most essential control, that of the local life.

In the Arab world "between the military elite and religious elites, it was always nothing." Impose democracy from the top, as intended to do George Bush in Iraq, may not work, it only reinforces the religious consideration. However, the emergence of a civil society, the third power expected just disturb the immobility of the other two.

Civil society But what reality What strength Central issues of course. The Tunisia seems to be "in advance" by his educated youth. But, even in Egypt, where 30 of jobs are still agricultural, a civil society emerges from the social failure: soil of mass unemployment, inequality, for the lack of reforms and, today, the rise of food prices. It is welded on three claims: against the corruption of the elites, against poverty and for political freedoms, communication and creation. It flourishes on the globalization of the images, the cyberforce which speaks Daniel Cohen (2): TV information and Internet exchanges generate unbearable comparisons between "what is happening here and what happens elsewhere."

Does all of this that Iranian scenario for the replacement of the military despot by the religious despot is excluded No, Islamist parties represent the more organized forces, they are to lead or participate in the power. But the optimism comes from the game to three, much more open and changing. It will have to create 80 million jobs by 2020 in the region to absorb the new generations. Impossible without promoting civil society.