But it seems that Libya is the surer bet for an overthrow in very near future. All of the ingredients are there. The state is cracking down with extreme brutality. In Benghazi, mercenaries shipped in by Gaddafi are carrying out random killings, with dozens reportedly dead so far. The regime is intent on terrorising the population into submission and has even, predictably, shut down the internet. The electricity has been shut off in insurgent areas. Yet it says a lot that Gaddafi is so lacking in authority over his own state structure that he’s having to hire mercenaries to come in and put down the revolt.
AlJazeera reports that the security forces are cracking down and have fired on funerals of demonstrators killed earlier in Benghazi, murdering at least nineteen more people. But they also report that in turn, the protestors have managed to take over the military security headquarters in that city, finding “African mercenaries” within. If Khadaffi has had to bring in foreign mercenaries, the end might be near for him…
Thousands of union workes protest against the governor of Wisconsin’s proposed bill to take away workers’ rights. This bill was supposedly needed to combat a budget shortfall. Guess what? There wasn’t any shortfall:
Wisconsin’s new Republican governor has framed his assault on public worker’s collective bargaining rights as a needed measure of fiscal austerity during tough times.
The reality is radically different. Unlike true austerity measures — service rollbacks, furloughs, and other temporary measures that cause pain but save money — rolling back worker’s bargaining rights by itself saves almost nothing on its own. But Walker’s doing it anyhow, to knock down a barrier and allow him to cut state employee benefits immediately.
Furthermore, this broadside comes less than a month after the state’s fiscal bureau — the Wisconsin equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office — concluded that Wisconsin isn’t even in need of austerity measures, and could conclude the fiscal year with a surplus. In fact, they say that the current budget shortfall is a direct result of tax cut policies Walker enacted in his first days in office.
Union workers, inspired by what’s happened in Egypt, Tunesia and elsewhere have begun to fight back against this cynical move. The Democrats are nowhere to be found [UPDATE] because that way the Wisconsin state senate lacks a quorum to actually sign this bill in law. From Crooked Timber:
Today the Senate Democrats buggered off to Rockford, Illinois (which, it has to be said, displays heroic dedication, as anyone who’s been to Rockford will know) so that the Senate lacks a quorum. This gave a huge boost to the protesters, who had been anticipating a vote and defeat today. I’ve chatted with one Democratic legislator and my wife with another: both report that the Republicans are really rattled by the response, having simply not anticipated it (no-one, absolutely no-one, did—everyone I know has been stunned, and that includes leading union organisers). I have to say the Democrats in the legislature have been solid—like the union leaderships they seem to understand that, as one just told me “we’re in the fight of our livesâ€. And there is a sense among the demonstrators that this is the one to win.
“Possibly the thing one remembers most about Levin – and the most pertinent here – is that although he was certainly a cultured and often an interesting man, he was also possibly the single biggest pompous twit at large in Britain in the Seventies.” – ejh.
Proof thatwanting to punch smug, condescending critics is not a new invention… Bet a few children’s writers want to do this to Martin Amis right now.
Headteacher Juliet Strang has been removed from Villiers High School after a student strike and mass protests.
It is a great victory. To the joyous relief of everyone, her reign ended with an announcement to the teachers by the chair of governors on Tuesday morning.
Hundreds of students protested twice outside the school against the sacking of the school’s NUT union rep, Amerjit Virdee.
Amerjit has taught at the school for 28 years and is head of maths. Many see his sacking as an attack on the union.
A magnificent 4-hour strike by students on Tuesday of last week closed the school and was the key moment in the dispute.
Strang’s response was incredible. She locked out whole years of students. The police backed her up, refusing them access to the school.
In this paper, we use new data on coup d’etats and elections to uncover a striking change in what happens after the coup. Whereas the vast majority of successful coups before 1990 installed their leaders durably in power, between 1991 and 2001 the picture reverses, with the majority of coups leading to competitive elections in 5 years or less. We argue that with the end of the Cold War, outside pressure has produced a devel- opment we characterize as the “electoral norm†– a requirement that binds successful coup-entrepreneurs to hold reasonably prompt and competitive elections upon gaining power. Consistent with our explanation, we find that post-Cold War those countries that are most dependent on Western aid have been the first the embrace competitive elections after the coup. Our theory is also able to account for the pronounced decline in the non-constitutional seizure of executive power since the early 1990s. While the coup d’etat has been and still is the single most important factor leading to the down- fall of democratic government, our findings indicate that the new generation of coups have been considerably less nefarious for democracy than their historical predecessors.
Of course, as the Egyptians know, there’s more to democracy than just holding elections and a return to democracy after a military coup is often only cosmetic; even Burma has elections. Coups and military dictatorships are too heavyhanded for the modern totalitarian: better to give the semblance of democracy to the people, let these elections even be meaningful, if unthreatening. Even (especially) in democracy’s “heartlands” a lot of the system cannot be changed through elections and we’re only offered a choice between New and Classic Coke. That’s the pessimist take.
The optimist’s take on these developments is that even phony democracy is better than none and cynical election manipulation is still better than bullets in the streets, but also that democracy can and often will lead to more democracy, that acting out the trappings of democracy makes it real as people demand their rights supposedly safeguarded by it. That’s also what we saw in Egypt, where the slender space given to democracy and opposition against Mubarak in the end erupted and forced him to abandon power.