

The unsung development miracles of our time: Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria   - cwan
http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2010/11/the-unsung-development-miracles-of-our-time.html

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candre717
These countries demonstrate "a willingness to depart from the conventional
wisdom of the day and experiment with their own remedies." Sounds like a
startup mentality in a diplomatic setting. It's interesting to note as well
the author's observation on the lack of democratic progress in these
countries. I think the reason that the tone of the article is that of surprise
is that these countries think and act differently from Western counterparts.
It is hard to imagine progress can impact others who don't follow the same
principles as yourself.

~~~
rdtsc
I am wondering if by "wisdom of the day" he means the standard IMF and World
Bank policy + loan packets for developing countries, that often lead to an
increase of GDP but a decrease or stagnation of social indices.

As for "democratization" , it seems somehow there is the unspoken assumption
that a country has to go through it and it should the first on the list. It
usually comes along with liberalization of the markets to the outside products
and companies.

My guess is that most people in developing countries would rather quickly opt
for access to healthcare, education, jobs, low crime rate, and peace, even if
it means losing democracy.

~~~
eru
Democracy is actually not that important. At least for smallish countries, I'd
say. Singapore, Hong Kong, and, say, early Britain did fine without democracy.

The rule of law and proper markets strike me as much more important. They do
often go hand in hand with democracy, though.

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lkrubner
Interesting:

"Only Tunisia among the three is a high growth country, underlining one of the
report’s main findings that economic growth and human development often
diverge significantly, even over as long a time frame as 40 years."

~~~
narag
Morocco's emigration to Europe and foreign companies establishing there might
be two factors to take in consideration.

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takriz
tunisia is shit, it's a tough dictatorship where free expression means prison,
torture and repression, and if you dare to publish that online it gets
censored. that's our case since august 2000 and needless to say youtube,
dailymotion and all video sharing sites for that matter are blocked while
facebook is filtered and the net lives on DPI.

takriz

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wazoox
The best book I've read about development is "Bad samaritans". Damn
interesting, indeed, and flies in the face of conventional wisdom, like these
countries apparently do.

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eru
Why did the author put scare-quotes around `facts'?

------
klbarry
"What is somewhat puzzling, as Rodriguez and Samman also note, is that these
countries have not made nearly as much progress in democratization."

You can read more on this phenomena in Fareed Zakaria's excellent book, "The
Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad"

~~~
muhfuhkuh
I never thought it possible, but I think it's actually cogent to quote Jackie
Chan in an HN thread!

"I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we
are not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want."

In alot of ways, there are some cultures to which democratization is simply
incompatible, like those with 1.5 billion people. Even here in the US, we're
finding that our rights to move freely must be tempered by TSA searches,
PATRIOT act and other impingements in the name of security, so why is it so
surprising that countries can increase their quality of life and economic
standing while still holding onto "antiquated" notions of freedom? What if
that is actually the end-run for civilization and it's actually the US that is
behind the political ideology curve? We seem to be moving inexorably toward
China-like "freedom with caveats" direction, and the electorate actually seems
to prefer it (if this past mid-term election can be deemed any indication).

~~~
scythe
If you total the number of people living in Western democracies, you get more
than 1.3 billion, the current population of China. You can prove this easily,
if you count India as a Western democracy, or harder, if you don't (US + South
America (except for Venezuela) + Mexico + Western Europe).

>there are some cultures to which democratization is simply incompatible

There's no evidence _at all_ to believe that democracy wouldn't work in China,
as it's never been tried. On the other hand, if you look at the downfall of
the Soviet Union, Russia's experiment with democracy has been quite a success,
even if it's not so perfect a freedom as we're party to in the US. It's
certainly not Stalinist and the very existence of organized resistance
movements in Russia, something that would have been entirely unheard-of thirty
years ago, is a sign that they've made huge strides in the right direction,
and their global standing seems to have benefited.

>Even here in the US, we're finding that our rights to move freely must be
tempered by TSA searches, PATRIOT act and other impingements in the name of
security

If by "security" you mean "security theatre", then sure. The vast majority of
academics disagree with the new restrictions, and most people I know think
they're absurd.

>What if that is actually the end-run for civilization and it's actually the
US that is behind the political ideology curve?

Let's all hope not! I cannot understand this argument, as there seems to be no
substance to it. There's a weight of literature on the value of freedom (e.g.
John Locke, Voltaire), and little inquiry in this regard.

>We seem to be moving inexorably toward China-like "freedom with caveats"
direction, and the electorate actually seems to prefer it

I have no idea how you could come to this conclusion. The vast majority of tea
party anxiety over Obama was that he was restricting freedom _too much_. The
main issue of the protesters was that their freedom was threatened, at least
in their perception, and whether the candidates they chose are actually
working to improve freedom is not quite so relevant as the reasons they chose
such candidates.

Quite the contrary, just two weeks ago the US state of California came closer
to legalizing marijuana than has any other entity for the past thirty years. A
general movement toward restricted freedom, indeed. We're seeing such major
gains such as legalized abortion and gay marriage even in highly religious
regions such as South America and, aparently, Tunisia, and many countries with
a long history of human rights violations, e.g. Bangladesh, Vietnam,
Nicaragua, have improved markedly in recent years -- the current state of
affairs is close to the freeest many such countries have ever seen. You don't
hear about all the good things happening in the world in the news as much, but
they're happening. The doctrine that freedom of speech is an inalienable human
right may have been implemented in the US some 234 years ago, but it only
became international law 60 years ago. Progress, indeed.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
"Let's all hope not! I cannot understand this argument, as there seems to be
no substance to it. There's a weight of literature on the value of freedom
(e.g. John Locke, Voltaire), and little inquiry in this regard."

I mean, if we continually capitulate to those parties and politicians who
support anti-democracy, anti-freedom ideas and laws, why wouldn't there be
substance to the argument? Where on earth do you see republicans loosening any
laws except tax-based ones? Is that really all there is to freedom? Freedom to
spend money the way you see fit? Why do we have to twist ourselves into
ideological pretzels about freedom when all it takes is "low taxes = true
freedom"? Our speech and actions get limited, our freedom of movement is
impinged by naked scanners and crotch invasions. I mean, the theory is sound,
I agree (Lock, Voltaire, hell go back to Seneca the Younger while we're
reminiscing), but the reality doesn't. Not here in the US, not in Europe, not
anywhere. It really is a matter of "the system would work great if it weren't
for the users". In our case, the user is the electorate.

"The vast majority of tea party anxiety over Obama was that he was restricting
freedom too much."

How, exactly? If anything, he's loosened the reins and widened the locus of
control through more open governance. It's the tea party that propose, among
other disparate things, placing homeless people in prison barracks, not
knowing where in the constitution declared the separation of church and state,
and wanting to bring back bartering chickens and other goods for medical care.
They are all, of course, almost bombastically fervent about a strong military,
and support the wars.

The only freedom they were afraid of was freedom from paying high taxes, and I
think to a person _no one_ really wants to pay really high taxes. Ask even
bleeding hearts like me and I'll say "yeah, I don't really want to pay really
high taxes". But, that seriously seems to be the only platform upon which the
Tea Party hung their "freedom" watch; else why weren't they gathering in DC
against the PATRIOT act and Guantanamo Bay?

~~~
scythe
>They are all, of course, almost bombastically fervent about a strong
military, and support the wars.

You know, this is so entirely wrong that it discredits the whole paragraph.
You clearly know nothing about the Tea Party movement, or even that it was
started in support of Ron Paul, the most anti-war politician there is.

>I mean, if we continually capitulate to those parties and politicians who
support anti-democracy, anti-freedom ideas and laws, why wouldn't there be
substance to the argument?

Who's capitulating? There are more democracies in the world today than ever
before. _Ever_.

