The bloody civil conflict continues in Libya between forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and those opposed to him, with the dictator ruthlessly rebuffing the efforts to topple him and seemingly set to confound the expectations of those who had thought he would follow his neighbours, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, into the political wilderness. It is now becoming increasingly apparent that the domino effect of generally peaceful popular uprisings in the name of democracy, triggered by events in Tunisia at the beginning of the year, may be – at least for the present – running out of momentum.
Those encouraged by the fall of President Ben Ali, after 23 years in power, and by President Mubarak’s resignation, after 30 years, may have been guilty of failing to appreciate basic differences in the nature of the three regimes and their respective autocratic leaders.
The most obvious difference is that Mr Gaddafi, officially known as the ‘Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya [people’s republic]’ – when will such leaders realise that a telltale sign of dictatorship is having grandiloquent titles conferred on themselves? – has had no compunction whatsoever in resorting to armed violence and lethal force against his own people, in order to hold on to power after 42 years of absolutist and eccentric rule.
Mr Ben Ali’s virtual abdication and flight from Tunisia was as sudden as it was unexpected, following anti-government demonstrations throughout the country. Mr Mubarak held out for as long as he could in the face of a campaign of civil resistance and increasing international pressure, even as the army took a semi-neutral stance before it accepted its role as ‘protector of the people.’ In both cases, the two presidents not only saw the writing on the wall, but interpreted its message clearly, if grudgingly. Ultimately, they put their country first, even if in Mr Ben Ali’s case, self-preservation may have been uppermost in his mind.
The other major difference lies in the nature of the dictatorships in question, particularly when the label ‘dictatorship’ can be subject to loose use and misinterpretation. With regard to the cases under consideration in North Africa, it is perhaps sufficient to distinguish between totalitarian and authoritarian forms of dictatorship.
Totalitarian dictatorship, in accordance with the classic studies of Hanna Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism) and Carl J Fiedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski (Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy), is characterised by total state control of the economy and all aspects of society. The totalitarian state seeks to organise and mobilise the masses by means of a single party and indoctrination in a hegemonic ideology based on a vision of a utopian future championed by a charismatic, messianic leader. A system of physical or psychological terror prevails, enforced by the party, the police and paramilitary organisations. The leader and his party exercise total control over the institutions of the state, including the judiciary. Freedom of expression is non-existent and the state also controls all communication media, though in the age of the internet this is becoming more of a challenge.
An authoritarian dictatorship is one in which exclusive, unaccountable and arbitrary political power is concentrated in a leader or leadership clique unelected by the people. Authoritarian dictatorship, however, generally eschews an exaggerated personality cult built around the figure of the leader and seeks to entrench itself through institutions such as the ruling party, the military and the state bureaucracy. While the degree of brutishness may vary and even though political repression and the denial of civil liberties may be typical, the people are not usually subject to persecution as long as they do not get involved in politics. Indeed, as argued by Harvard scholar, Jorge Domínguez, in a paper, The Perfect Dictatorship: Comparing Authoritarian Rule in South Korea and in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, delivered to the 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, in which he compared authoritarian regimes of the 1960s and 1970s, the more successful ones tend to co-opt civilians and delegate policy-making authority to them in areas of their competence – technocrats, if you like. And while some social and economic institutions may exist relatively free from government control, truly activist (read political) civil society is not allowed to evolve and flourish. The problem for authoritarian dictatorships is that their time eventually runs out, though this may be later rather than sooner.
Mr Ben Ali and Mr Mubarak were arguably authoritarian dictators while Mr Gaddafi is more obviously in the totalitarian mould. The first two would appear to have had, in the end, a firmer grasp of the political reality confronting them. Mr Gaddafi, on the other hand, like all totalitarians, no doubt believes in his own infallibility, hence his refusal to step down. Unfortunately, history shows that totalitarian dictatorships are more difficult to defeat than authoritarian dictatorships and generally, the endgame is more violent and bloody.
