Democracy and the Rule of Law

Egypt burns once again, as the new regime cracks down on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations.

The violence there illustrates once again the crucial distinction -- and the vital interaction -- between democracy as such and the rule of law as such. As long ago as 1776, Thomas Paine argued, following Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others,  that there can be know true law without democracy. Monarchs and dictators, they showed, rule with no legitimacy because only the people can authorize a government. But experience since shows, no more vividly than in Cairo, that democracy is necessary but not sufficient to a society governed by the rule of law. Morsi and his group were properly elected but then promptly trampled on the principles of power-sharing necessary for any democratic government to work. And so the government collapsed, and we have returned to a dictatorship much like the one run by Hosni Mubarek.

It's a sad time for the Arab Spring, one that I hope passes and allows Egyptians and others in the magrib to find a government that works for them.