When a State is Not a State

Middle Eastern democracies are having a hard time grabbing a foothold. Although democracy is the best form of government conceived at this time, and although it has worked for Western nations for a while, developing countries have trouble getting the mix just right. Corruption, voting violence, and breakdowns along ethnic lines all plague nations transferring from regimes to legitimate government. In spatula's most recent, excellent post on the Andorran Atmosphere blog, he discusses the sovereign rights of two disputed states, Abkhazia and Somaliland. Here I take a different viewpoint: except in rare cases, new governments and nations should not be formed except when absolutely necessary, because of the bevy of things that can sour the process of becoming a capable nation.

Here, minds inevitably oscillate back to 10th grade history class, and you recall that the American colonies separated from a stable mother nation and turned out alright. However, there was a distinct reason that European nations eagerly waited for the American experiment to fail: there wasn't any precedent for it succeeding. Indeed, America remains the Great Outlier, having received from England a certain blend of - something - that allowed the States to secede (and succeed) quite apart from Europe. More modern colony-mothercountry breaks have not gone nearly so smoothly.

Let's look at some case studies: Algeria, a former French colony, broke off from France after a violent eight year conflict. French President Charles de Gaulle finally granted Algeria the right to a referendum on its future; Algeria chose independence. Unfortunately, Algeria went from benign French control, to an Algerian president, to a military coup and socialist, military domination within a few years of independence. This regime would last decades, the military still has a heavy hand in politics, and Algeria is currently trapped in the vice grip of Al-Qaeda. In Angola, independence from Portugal in 1975 led directly to a 30 year civil war. Since the assassination of a Populist political figure in 2002, the warring factions have come to a cease-fire, but elections are still not legitimate. For the sake of brevity, I'll stop here, but there are literally dozens of more examples I could have mention (you can check them out at Freedomhouse.org)

Back to spatula's post. As he noted in his post, the breakdowns of the USSR and of the state of Somalia lead to special cases; the "except when absolutely necessary" corollary in my above thesis applies here, and in my opinion Abkazia and Somaliland have at least legitimate reason to try a new government. However, this is no guarantee their gambit will work out soon, or at all - democracy's success is just too unpredictable for that..