The author analyzes the results of recent revolutions in Egypt, Libya, Ukraine and Thailand and wonders if what had been a from autocracy to democracy is now becoming a shift from democracy to "mobocracy."
The ideals of democracy - where the people rule in a manner which benefits the general public - are often thwarted by the practical realities of how people in fact behave. Groups define their well being in terms of whatever groups they identify with and do whatever is necessary to obtain those benefits.
A well constructed constitution is meant to minimize the ability of a faction to undermine a democratic republic in large measure by establishing institutions that contain their actions, but the democratic masses in these nations see little reason to uphold those institutions - assuming that they even exist.
As the factors that existed to prevent democracy from slipping into mobocracy disappear, instability increases in each nation.
. . . while these ‘mobocrats’ tear down civilisations of centuries, they have no mechanism, means or ways to manage democracy, and propel themselves into peace, unity, security and prosperity.
To that effect, Libya after Col Gaddafi is neither a democracy nor an autocracy. National oil wells are being scrambled for by tribal militias and diplomats. In neighbouring Egypt, the former ‘democratic’ masses and their governors have now been labelled ‘terrorists’, as they continue to destroy what may need a new martial plan to reconstruct.
In Ukraine, the masses started off somewhat civilized, but sooner degenerated into destructive mobs against their “commonwealth”, as they demanded to belong to their maternal Europe, while the governors preferred to remain with their paternal Russia.
In Thailand, the masses demanded the stepping down of their elected lady prime minister. When she called for elections, to give them an opportunity to elect whoever they thought was a better choice, they did not want them.
These are the mobs and masses.
He is also critical of the leadership in other nations that have seen changes in their governing systems where elites have taken charge - Iraq, Juba, and Lebanon among them. In these cases democracy cannot take hold since no institutions exist to restrain the ambitions of the leadership (Egypt fits here as well).
This supports the argument we make in class that while it is true that democracies are difficult systems to establish, they are even more difficult to maintain. It was a chief concern of the Constitution's framers, and one of the points the authors of the Federalist Papers tried to make - that the Constitutional system they were able to develop would be able to restrain both the elites and the masses.
