Americans, Put Away Your Quills - By Nathan J. Brown | The Middle East Channel - 0 views
mideast.foreignpolicy.com/...americans_put_away_your_quills
Egypt Tunisia constitution analysis opinion Libya Arabs arabspring
shared by Ed Webb on 08 Nov 11
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constitution writing is a supremely political process. It is not carried out by philosopher kings but pushed through by real political forces playing a gritty political game. Despite what some of us may dimly remember from junior high school U.S. History, our process was no different. Constitutional kibitzing rarely finds an enthusiastic audience. After the initial election in the various Arab countries, the constitution will be the first test of the new balance of political forces -- and it will be the first real opportunity for them to discover not simply how to compete, but how to cooperate. Even more important than the text they produce, the patterns of interaction they establish as they draft will produce lasting patterns for politics. They need to keep their eyes on each other -- and that is precisely what they will do.
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The U.S. experience, rich as it is, is very idiosyncratic. From a constitutional perspective, the United States is a marsupial: exotic and sometimes even cuddly, but also a product of a completely different evolutionary path.
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Tunisia received its first constitution when France was an empire and Germany was not yet a state. Egypt has a long and rich tradition of constitutional experiments dating back almost as long. Much of that heritage is deeply troubled to be sure, but most Arab societies are full of people who already speak their own constitutional language
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Tunisians debating the country's identity -- so far the biggest hot button issue in constitutional debates -- are hardly likely to pull in foreign consultants to draft language. The Egyptian committee of one hundred people is unlikely to want to be seen as allowing outsiders to vet their work in a political context in which "foreign agendas" are the topic of daily denunciations in the press.
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If the United States can overcome its own phobia of international law, it will find these documents a promising source of values and of language that Arabs have already accepted in theory.
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The Egyptian military shows definite signs of attempting to shoehorn in a permanent constitutional role for itself and an exemption from civilian oversight. We likely cannot make them change their minds, but we can communicate publicly to Egyptians that they are doing so without our blessing.