Harvard International Review:

In your seminal piece in Foreign Affairs, you described the dichotomy between the spread of liberal constitutionalism and democratization. How has the experience of the last few years changed your interpretation of this trend?

I think that, as with any theory when it encounters reality, mine has grown in interesting ways that I could not have predicted. Some things have happened over the past few years that have powerfully confirmed my views, and some things, frankly, have happened that have made me ask whether I need to modify some of its elements. For one example, when I wrote in 1997 about illiberal democracies, I mentioned Russia as an example, which met with a lot of criticism. A lot of people thought I was being too tough on [Russian President Boris] Yeltsin, but I think the subsequent two or three years have borne out my analysis very well. Yeltsin moved in an even more authoritarian direction by the end of his presidency, and instituted in effect what Richard Pipes has called a coup d’etat by resigning six months before his term was due to end, installing Vladimir Putin as president. Putin then went on to dismantle several other features of constitutional government. That sort of consolidation of elected autocracy has taken place not only in Russia, but also in the majority of the former Soviet states. At one level there are several countries where people may say that a similar pattern has been followed. At another level, there are countries such as Iran, which is an illiberal democracy—and it is the most democratic country in the Muslim Middle East—and yet I think there is some evidence that the experience of democratic, or quasi-democratic, rule has created pressures for liberalism. I have to confess I find that argument intriguing but ultimately unpersuasive, and I have reformulated some of my views on Iran.

How should illiberal democracies or liberal autocracies be approached by the United States or other international powers?

Let me give you another example that ties into this issue of how things have changed. When General Pervez Musharraf took power in Pakistan, there was widespread denunciation of him in just about every major American publication. They said this was not good, that this was a kind of hijacking of democracy. What is interesting is that the press in Pakistan, which is reasonably free, reacted very differently. It was by and large in favor of the coup because they believed the democracy they had was a sham. When George Bush, as you remember, was running for US president, he was asked who was the new leader of Pakistan, and he did not remember the name, but he said he was a general and would add some stability to the region. The Washington Post took it upon itself to declare that the real scandal was not that Bush did not know Musharraf’s name, but that he had the gall to say Musharraf would bring order. Now, two years later, I think it is clear that Musharraff has been extraordinarily brave and courageous, a reformist in almost every dimension— economic, political, religious, cultural—and that he was able to do so because he was not victim to the same short-term interests that modern politicians have to deal with.

The Middle East presents the dilemma that Pakistan faced because in many of these countries there are large segments of the population that are illiberal and often violent and extreme. To hope that liberalism will come by throwing open the democratic process to these elements seems absurd. Over a long maturation process perhaps this will happen, but another question you have to ask is whether you want every country to go through its own version of the French Revolution and the Terror so that then you can achieve liberal democracy. Or is there some better path? People like Musharraf would say that in troubled societies, there are other paths as well.

What are the policy approaches the United States or International Monetary Fund (IMF) should take?

I think there are two main things US foreign policy should take a look at. First, in the Middle East the United States is caught in a terrible dilemma. The US government is supporting illegitimate autocrats, but they may be better in the short term that what may replace them. What the United States wants in the Middle East is liberalization, not democratization, and the source of this liberalization will be these regimes. Washington should try to press governments like those in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to liberalize, especially economically. Liberalizing the economy is the great Trojan horse of political liberalization because regimes generally are willing to do it. They do not see it as threatening to their power bases but as a chance to modernize their countries. In almost all cases historically, it has resulted in political liberalization. I think one of the things that the United States can do is really push economic liberalization. Washington has done it a little bit in some places like Egypt and Jordan, with some success in Jordan and mixed results in Egypt. Saudi Arabia is the most complicated case because the United States does not have a lot of leverage since it does not give them aid, but even there I believe there is more that can be done. The power of US rhetoric and policy can be very strong if focused. Think about something like the Helsinki accords; they had no teeth but wound up being very powerful.

The second, which is more a caution to the IMF, is that destabilizing and delegitimizing a regime is very easy. If you do not have something to replace it with, you can unravel a country in a way that is very difficult to reconstruct. Take Indonesia; the IMF and the administration of US President Bill Clinton, in my opinion, delegitmized and destabilized Suharto’s regime in the midst of the East Asian crisis. They added their words to domestic critics, and that ended up being the crucial addition. They dislodged Suharto with the idea that it was then time for Indonesia to be democratic. They failed to notice that Indonesia had no functioning political institutions or political parties, that Suharto had run the country like a court, and that Indonesia was still at a low level of economic development compared with the places where successful transitions to democracy had taken place. So, what you ended up with was chaos and the fleeing of the Chinese entrepreneurs, who had all the money. As a result, Indonesia’s gross domestic product has contracted by 50 percent, and the country has been plagued with all sorts of communal violence. About 100 million people have been moved back into Third World level poverty after being drawn out of it during 30 years of growth. You have to ask yourself, for an average Indonesian, was the IMF and the West’s intervention beneficial? I don’t think so.