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By Ed Kellerman Special to The Sun

Would you like some good news on international affairs? About a place that survived a dictatorship and revolution, and created its own constitution and democratic government? Its not America, but Tunisia.

Yes, Tunisia! Battered by centuries of invasions and a 35-year dictatorship, four groups forged a new constitution to win a Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

During a week-long School for International Training faculty workshop, seven professors met with historical and archeological experts, members of Parliament and political parties, non-governmental organization leaders, two Nobel Prize-winning groups and the Tunisian president. We found that every Tunisian carries a serious torch for democracy and our local coordinators, Mounier Khalifa and Najeb Ben Lazreg, spun stories from ancient cultures to current political intrigue.

After the fall of former President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, Tunisians set up a Troika, an alliance between three parties the Congress for the Republic, with a provisional president; Ettakatol, led by the president of the National Constituent Assembly; and the Islamic party of Ennahdha, led by Rached Ghnaoucchi.

For a year, National Constituent Assembly President Mustafa Ben Jafar wrote most of the new constitution through 600 meetings with lawyers, technocrats, religious leaders, trade unions, business leaders and party leaders. They developed their Four Freedoms Dignity through jobs, social justice through equality, liberty through freedom of conscience, and democracy through universal suffrage.

The goal was to transform the one-party state into a responsive administration with human rights and gender equality. The election commission now requires each party to field equal numbers of women on their candidate lists.

How successful were they? The new constitution was ratified by 200 out of 217 electoral representatives! Tunisia now has over 200 political parties, 85 newspapers and more than 40 TV and radio stations, one of which (Mosaique) is a well-respected regional news service. Citizens now have multiple internet platforms and engage in spirited conversations at cafes over espressos, mint tea, beer or Turkish ice cream.

Despite factionalization, the best analogy is a rugby scrum where the players push and pull as the scrum moves around the field. Their fate is truly intertwined with each other.

The path to democracy is paved with pitfalls. Youth unemployment, especially among college graduates is high (an estimated 240,000 are out of work). Endemic corruption (estimated 40 percent of GDP) and low foreign direct investment (only 88 large companies in Tunisia) means low funds for infrastructure or business development.

Thanks to the internet and social media, demonstrations are frequent. Plus, the establishment of the final check and balance a federal judiciary is past its one year due date.

However, several times, Tunisians have turned away from physical carnage. Just before former President Ben Ali left the country, the Army refused to fire on thousands of demonstrators. Even after two assassinations and the most recent killing of two demonstrators in the oil town of Tataouine, the fervent demonstrations have not degraded into the violence of Egypt or lawlessness of neighboring Libya.

We stayed in a vibrant capital city, Tunis, visited Roman ruins and Dougga, a World Heritage site that is waiting for you. Police presence was high in the Tunis City Centre but moderate along the highways and I saw no baksheesh (bribes) changing hands. A meeting with current President Beji Caid Essebsi and a tour of the presidential palace included viewing priceless archeological artifacts and a stunning reception room overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. He met Donald Trump ceremonially in Saudi Arabia but said he would withhold judgment until the Group of 7 summit. Then he smiled.

The strength of the post-revolutionary period is a deep passion for true democracy, a secular state with religious freedom. Despite this preference for a secular democracy, the religious Ennhadha party surprisingly won the most parliamentary seats and the first freely elected presidency. But the party is conflicted over how much Islamization they will tolerate and how money from Saudi Arabia and Qatar will be used for non-secular purposes, especially in education.

Late in the Second Continental Congress, Ben Franklin addressed the contentious assembly, Gentlemen, if we dont hang together, we will surely hang separately. Tunisians now recognize the opportunity of a lifetime to become the envy of the Arab world. If they hang together, this could be a bright spot in a region not known for stability and democracy.

Now doesnt that just brighten your day?

Ed Kellerman is a master lecturer and Fulbright Scholar in the Dial Center for Written and Oral Communication in the University of Floridas College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His full-length video on the trip is available on YouTube at http://bit.ly/tunisiatrip.

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Ed Kellerman: A path to democracy paved with pitfalls - Gainesville Sun

But cheap participation reflects a troubling infirmity in how partisans of both parties engage in politics. In fact, it is not because of gerrymandering, Citizens United, cable news or any of the other common scapegoats that our system is broken, but because of us: ordinary people who are doing politics the wrong way.

For years, political scientists have studied how people vote, petition, donate, protest, align with parties and take in the news, and have asked what motivates these actions. The typical answers are civic duty and self-interest.

But civic duty and self-interest do not capture the ways that middle- and upper-class Americans are engaging in politics. Now it is the Facebooker who argues with friends of friends he does not know; the news consumer who spends hours watching cable; the repeat online petitioner who demands actions like impeaching the president; the news sharer willing to spread misinformation and rumor because it feels good; the data junkie who frantically toggles between horse races in suburban Georgia and horse races in Britain and France and horse races in sports (even literal horse races).

What is really motivating this behavior is hobbyism the regular use of free time to engage in politics as a leisure activity. Political hobbyism is everywhere.

There are several reasons for this. For one, technology allows those interested in politics to gain specialized knowledge and engage in pleasing activities, such as reinforcing their views with like-minded friends on Facebook. For another, our present era of relative security (nearly a half-century without a conscripted military) has diminished the solemnity that accompanied political talk in the past. Even in the serious moments since the 2016 election, political engagement for many people is characterized by forwarding the latest clip that embarrasses the other side, like videos of John McCain asking incomprehensible questions or Elizabeth Warren destroying Betsy DeVos.

Then there are the well-intentioned policy innovations over the years that were meant to make politics more open but in doing so exposed politics to hobbyists: participatory primaries, ballot initiatives, open-data policies, even campaign contribution limits. The contribution rules that are now in place favor the independent vanity projects of wealthy egomaniacs instead of allowing parties to raise money and build durable local support.

The result of all this is political engagement that takes the form of partisan fandom, the seeking of cheap thrills, and amateurs trying their hand at a game. This can be seen in the billionaire funding super PACs all the way down to the everyday armchair quarterback who professes that the path to political victory is through ideological purity. (In the face of a diverse and moderate country, the demand for ideological purity itself can be a symptom of hobbyism: If politics is a sport and the stakes are no higher, why not demand ideological purity if it feels good?)

Not all activism is political hobbyism. A Black Lives Matter protest meant to call attention to police misconduct and demand change on an issue with life-or-death consequences is not hobbyism. Neither is a spontaneous airport protest over the presidents travel ban, which also had clear goals and urgent demands.

What about attendance at town hall meetings hosted by members of Congress? These events could be places for serious discourse and reveal crucial citizen perspectives on matters of public policy, but they are more often hijacked by fair-weather activists looking to see action. It is certainly peculiar that Democrats who are motivated by the health care debate now couldnt be bothered to show up at town hall meetings back in 2009 (or to vote in 2010), and the Tea Party activists of 2009 cant be bothered now, since it wouldnt be any fun for them.

What, exactly, is wrong with political hobbyism? We live in a democracy, after all. Arent we supposed to participate? Political hobbyism might not be so bad if it complemented mundane but important forms of participation. The problem is that hobbyism is replacing other forms of participation, like local organizing, supporting party organizations, neighbor-to-neighbor persuasion, even voting in midterm elections the most recent midterms had the lowest level of voter participation in over 70 years.

The Democratic Party, the party that embraces engagement, is in atrophy in state legislatures across the country. Perhaps this is because state-level political participation needs to be motivated by civic duty; it is not entertaining enough to pique the interest of hobbyists. The party of Hollywood celebrities also struggles to energize its supporters to vote. Maybe it is because when politics is something one does for fun rather than out of a profound moral obligation, the citizen who does not find it fun has no reason to engage. The important parts of politics for the average citizen simply may not be enjoyable.

Political hobbyism is a problem not just for Democrats. The hobbyist now occupying the Oval Office is evidence enough of the Republican version of this story. Donald Trumps election was possible because both political parties mistakenly decided several decades ago to have binding primary elections determine presidential nominations. Rather than having party leaders vet candidates for competency and sanity, as most democracies do, our parties turned the nomination process into a reality show in which the closest things to vetting are a clap-o-meter and a tracking poll.

Nevertheless, the problem of hobbyism holds more severe consequences for Democrats than for Republicans because of their commitment to mass engagement as a core value. An unqualified embrace of engagement, without leaders channeling activists toward clear goals, yields the spinning of wheels of hobbyism.

Democrats should know that an unending string of activities intended for instant gratification does not amount to much in political power. What they should ask is whether their emotions and energy are contributing to a behind-the-scenes effort to build local support across the country or whether they are merely a hollow, self-gratifying manifestation of the new political hobbyism.

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The Problem With Participatory Democracy Is the Participants - New York Times

Thousands of people take part in the Justice March in Turkey. Photograph: Depo Photos/via REX/Shutterstock

Hdr Aydur rested his blistered feet under the shade of a tree on the side of the highway that runs between Ankara and Istanbul. The 57-year-old, from Erzincan in Turkeys north-east, who has diabetes, had been marching for 15 days. He is one of thousands journeying by foot from Turkeys capital to its largest city, many carrying banners that say adalet or justice.

We lost democracy in our country, and we want it back, Aydur said, his shirt bearing the images of Nuriye Glmen and Semih zaka, two teachers who were jailed last month after more than 70 days on hunger strike over their arbitrarily dismissal in a government decree.

Tens of thousands of people have been dismissed or detained in a broad government crackdown in the aftermath of a coup attempt last July that left more than 250 people dead and 1,400 wounded. After declaring a state of emergency, the governments purge went beyond the direct perpetrators of the coup to encompass a large swathe of civil society, the political opposition, academics, journalists and civil servants, squandering a rare moment of unity to solidify its hold on power.

In April, President Recep Tayyip Erdoan narrowly won a referendum that vastly expanded his powers, while the countrys judiciary has been reshaped in his image, with a quarter of the nations judges and prosecutors dismissed or jailed over alleged connections to Fethullah Glen, an exiled preacher whose grassroots movement is widely believed in Turkey to have orchestrated the putsch.

Senior opposition politicians have also been imprisoned. Earlier this month Enis Berberolu, a lawmaker with the Peoples Republican party (CHP), was jailed for 25 years after leaking information to the press on Turkish intelligences transfer of weapons across the border to Syrian rebels.

That arrest sparked the Adalet march, a 280-mile (450-km) walk led by the CHPs chairman, Kemal Kldarolu, which set off from Ankara on 15 June. Organisers hope it will culminate in a large rally in Istanbuls Maltepe neighbourhood on 9 July. It has drawn supporters along the way from across Turkish society despite the scorching summer heat, as it covers nine miles a day.

The protesters, dismissed as Glen supporters by the government, have given a variety of reasons for their involvement: the countrys slide to authoritarianism, the authorities abuse of the state of emergency, the arrest of journalists and politicians, the crackdown on dissent, and even opposition to retirement laws.

Academics and teachers are being wrongfully dismissed, losing their jobs and food and theyre being deprived of their constitutional rights, say Aydur. The only thing left for them is to resist, and I wanted to give a voice to their resistance. We want independent courts, not one-man rule, and we want this justice for everyone including those on the opposite side.

The atmosphere on Thursday was relaxed, belying the deep fissures and polarisation that run through a nation yet to come to terms with the coup attempt.

A year ago hundreds of thousands of Turks gathered in Yenikap square in Istanbul to celebrate victory over the coup plotters. But the euphoria quickly turned to alarm and then despair in the weeks and months that followed.

There is a reign of fear, Kldarolu said in an interview conducted during the march. Journalists and citizens, the people, cannot speak. This is what we want to get rid of.

When the 15 July coup happened every party was against it, but on 20 July there was a civil coup and its main plotter was Erdoan, he said. The state of emergency gave him all the power, and with all the dismissals and investigations against thousands of academics and journalists and civil servants, there are ordinary citizens who cannot even talk to their lawyers. There is oppression against the opposition, and lawmakers are being arrested. This justice march is against this civil coup.

Many of Erdoans religiously conservative supporters look upon the countrys secular opposition as elitist White Turks who used to dominate the upper echelons of the state and oppress the poor. In their eyes Erdoans rise can be interpreted as a rebuke to the excesses of the elite.

Namik Akbas, a 32-year-old from Amasya who joined the march, said the Erdoan government was using religion to divide people.

Turkey has been ruled for a long time by this mentality of manipulating the public, he said. Adalet to me means unifying the country under secular, enlightened values. Secularism is not against religion.

For Borga Budak, a 36-year-old CHP member from Ankara sporting a Che Guevara cap, the march is an attempt to give succour to the Turkish oppositions cowed base.

The idea of this protest isnt geographical, Budak said. It doesnt stop in Istanbul. People need hope, and this walk gives them hope.

Read more from the original source:
'We've lost democracy': on the road with Turkey's justice marchers - The Guardian

But the city has paid a price for embracing more democracy. The Hong Kong government has become less efficient and more divided than in the colonial era. An anti-business, anti-development and anti-mainland China ideology permeates debates in the legislature, which has become fractious and dysfunctional. Its hard to make the case that more democratic freedom has been a net gain for the citys more than seven million residents.

Filibustering in the legislature has slowed down many development projects, making land and housing shortages more acute, and hindering efforts to catch up with the rapid advances of neighboring mainland Chinese cities. As summer recess neared, the legislatures finance committee had approved only about half of the budgeted projects for the 2017-18 fiscal year.

The dysfunction of Hong Kongs legislature may also be a reflection of frustrations with high-speed growth, which appears to be breeding more inequality. Perhaps it is part of a global hostility to the excesses of capitalism. Whatever the cause, we have good reason to pause and reflect deeply on what sort of political system best suits our future development.

Like or not, we are part of China, not only politically, but culturally and economically. When Moodys downgraded Chinas debt credit rating in May, ours was downgraded in tandem.

And Beijing has reiterated, since publication of its white paper on one country, two systems in 2014, that the standing committee of Chinas legislature has the power to interpret Hong Kongs local laws. Under Chinas centralized system, cities, provinces and regions have no inherent power of their own. All the powers enjoyed by Hong Kong are given by Beijing, and can be taken back.

Our best bet lies in nurturing a harmonious and supportive relationship with mainland China. Its encouraging that some moderate democrats appear to have shifted their strategy by suggesting a more open dialogue with the central leadership. Several moderate democrats reportedly plan to attend a dinner with Mr. Xi this week.

Beijing, however, would be wrong to ignore Hong Kongs democracy movement. The fringe is becoming more extreme, with increasing calls in recent years for outright independence, a move that a majority of Hong Kongers reject. Most young people are unhappy with the political situation, and the nations leaders could find themselves with a much bigger challenge down the line.

While Beijing might be content with the election of Carrie Lam, a seasoned and popular civil servant who will be inaugurated on Saturday as Hong Kongs next leader, the undercurrent for change could return with a vengeance in just a few years time.

Regina Ip, a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, is the chairwoman of the New Peoples Party.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on June 30, 2017, in The International New York Times.

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Hong Kong's Democracy Dreams - New York Times

Wednesday, I discussed how Nancy MacLean at best wildly exaggerated the influence of John Calhouns thought on modern libertarianism (further elaboration from Phil Magness here) and how she asserted that a libertarian author who praised Brown v. Board of Education was actually praising southern resistance to Brown. Co-blogger Jonathan Adler enumerates other controversies about the books accuracy here.

Now, Im going to discuss some other errors and distortions in Democracy in Chains, all relating to my own academic home, George Mason University. Here I have the advantage of first-hand knowledge in some instances.

Lets start with Page 182, where MacLean identifies staunch conservative Edwin Meese, one-timer rector at George Mason, as chief among the cadre of the libertarian cause. On Page 198, in describing the makeup of George Mason Universitys Board of Visitors, she asserts that it now included such libertarian cadre members as Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol. She also identifies two conservative politicians with some libertarian sympathies, Dick Armey and James Miller, as Visitors who were part of this libertarian cadre. Her identification of Kristol as a libertarian made me laugh out loud, especially because there are few conservative writers less popular in libertarian intellectual circles than Kristol. But the notion that Meese, Feulner, et al., are libertarian cadre members is almost equally absurd.

Its of course much easier to assert a successful radical libertarian takeover of a university if you misidentify mainstream Republican conservative Visitors as libertarian radicals in the Koch orbit, but its also historical fiction, written by an academic historian. How did these conservative Republicans get to be Visitors? Not because of the Koch-funded libertarian conspiracy, but because the Board of Visitors is appointed by the governor, and Republican governors chose to appoint staunch Republicans. Not surprisingly, future Democratic governors replaced these Republican appointees with Visitors with Democratic ties, ending the libertarian takeover. (Its also worth noting that outside its economics department and law school, George Mason was and remains a typical strongly left-leaning university.)

I also chuckled at MacLeans account of the Institute for Humane Studies move from Menlo Park, Calif., to George Mason (IHS is devoted to nurturing the careers of young libertarian academics), which she suggests was part of an attempt to make IHS a player in the political world. MacLean asks, Was it the high energy he saw coming out of [economist James] Buchanans team [at George Mason] that led Charles Koch to move the institution closest to his heart? Did his earlier decision to give up on the Libertarian Party as a hopeless cause make him more receptive to other routes forward? We dont know.

Well, actually, we do know. Or at least I know. IHS moved from California to Virginia against the strong preference of everyone involved because it had to. IHS awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships annually to promising students, and thanks to recent tax reform, all of this money would suddenly be taxable unless IHS was affiliated with a university. Not too many universities were interested in hosting a radical libertarian academic organization. George Mason was willing to. Now if I know that, why wasnt MacLean able to find that out, instead of speculating?

Then there is MacLeans false depiction of Henry Manne, who was appointed dean of George Masons law school in 1986. MacLean writes, Manne rejected the idea of open searches for the best talent, in favor of hiring kindred thinkers, all white men who felt unappreciated at other schools.

Manne, who promised to put George Mason Law School on the map by making it a law and economics powerhouse, did quickly hire a group of scholars whom he knew from law and economics circles. That, however, doesnt mean the law school eschewed open searches. I can think of several colleagues who were hired through the normal law school meat market. In fact, Manne hired me through that process.

The notion that he only hired white men, meanwhile, is patently false. Its rather surprising that MacLean overlooks Bruce Kobayashi, a Japanese American, given that he is explicitly mentioned in the source cited by MacLean in her footnote. In 1987, Manne hired Joseph Broadus, an African American. By the time I joined the faculty in 1995, the Manne hires on our small faculty included two African Americans, two Asian Americans and two women. At least one other woman had joined the faculty but was hired away by the Bush administration. I cant think of a good excuse for MacLean not checking into this before falsely claiming that Manne only hired white men.

MacLean continues, At George Mason, he could soon advertise to right-wing donors, the entire curriculum is permeated with a distinctive intellectual flavor, emphasized and developed by almost every professor.' MacLean is not, in fact, quoting from donor material, but froma pamphlet Manne wrote in 1993 called An Intellectual History of the George Mason University School of Law. This pamphlet was distributed to all participants at George Mason Law and Economics Center events; I know because I received one at such an event in 1995. Moreover, rather than revealing a secret plot to make George Mason into a bastion of right-wing thought, the distinctive intellectual flavor Manne refers to is economic reasoning and the use of quantitative methods. Read in context, this is obvious (see for yourself), and MacLean is being dishonest or incompetent in suggesting otherwise.

Indeed, she immediately gives as an example of this intellectual flavor that Mannes law school would stake out a position on the side of corporations against consumerism and environmentalism, two causes that had grown in popularity and influence since the 1970s. His faculty would advocate the superiority of unregulated corporate capitalism and assert, as Manne himself argued in print, that companies needed liberation from the distortions created by government intervention.'

MacLeans footnoted sources for claiming that the George Mason Law School would stake out particular political positions are as follows: John Saloma, Ominous Politics: The New Conservative Labyrinth (1984), and M. Bruce Johnsen, ed., The Attack on Corporate America: The Corporate Issues Sourcebook (1978). I have the latter source in front of me. In it, Manne argues that the weight of the academic literature favors unregulated corporate capitalism. It says nothing about imposing that view on any law school faculty, then or in the future. I will update this post when I get ahold of the Saloma book, but one thing should be obvious; given that Manne wasnt offered the deanship at George Mason until well after the book was written, it wont support the claim that Manne was asserting that he would have George Mason Law School stake out a position on anything. And indeed, the law school has never, ever, attempted to force or encourage its faculty to take a particular position on any given issue or set of issues, and that includes during Mannes rather imperious reign as dean.

Almost all of the above is tangential to MacLeans overall thesis about the influence of James Buchanan on American politics, but it seems to be part of troubling pattern.

The rest is here:
Some dubious claims in Nancy MacLean's 'Democracy in Chains,' continued - Washington Post