Marking the presidential elections in Algeria last week and the upcoming votes in Iraq, Egypt, and Syria, Marc Lynch reflects on Arab voting:
[W]hile elections have never been sufficient for meaningful democracy, they are manifestly necessary. It is painfully ironic that the mantra “democracy is more than elections” took hold following one of the only Arab elections that actually approached the minimal standard for democracy. Those votes really were different from the dozens of earlier elections across the region, offering a tantalizing potential for the consolidation of representative, accountable government and the peaceful rotation of power. That’s now mostly gone, with even the idea of democratic legitimacy mortally wounded. Few of the current round of elections have much to do with any of that.
Instead, the current round of elections should point us back toward the pre-uprisings literature on authoritarian elections, nicely summarized by a 2009 Jennifer Gandhi and Ellen Lust review essay. Elections under authoritarianism serve many purposes, none of which involve the peaceful rotation of power, the imposition of accountability on elites, or the representation of citizen interests. Instead, as Jason Brownlee points out, they do things like offering a safety valve for regimes, serving as a form of political theater, and activating patronage networks.
The Dish 