"Q: Professor Bassam, you said the government [in Syria] being organically linked. What do you see type of governments that are evolving after the post-dictatorial period? Do you think they’ll have — they’ll be like Western-type democracy with church-state separation, or they’ll be like other countries, like, you know, Egypt, like Bahrain, like Iraq, that they’ll be indigenously — will let Islam play a role and there will not be much church-state separation?
Thank you.
DR. HADDAD: On the question of the Syrian alternative: the Syrian regime for the past 48 years has set the bar extremely low in terms of domestic policy, much less than regional and foreign policy, so I don’t think it’s going to be difficult to surpass that.
But when it comes to the question of Western democracy, and whether we are likely to see something emerge in that direction, I wonder what is meant by, in public discourse, what is meant by Western democracy. Do we mean the tradition, historically, of racism, sexism, and classism, slavery, all of which were based on genocide that coexisted with pseudo-democracy for the few who were basically upper-class propertied white men? Or are we talking about Western democracy that developed over 300 years to produce stable institutions which, basically, include what we — some of the fruits that we have today?
If you mean the result of this struggle: no. Syria, Egypt, Tunisia will not provide that, will not produce that anytime soon. It will produce something as nasty and problematic as American history was. Perhaps it will be squeezed into less than 300 years, perhaps it will not include the genocide of dozens of — millions of people and their enslavement, but it will be squeezed into a shorter period, one hopes."
