Spreading freedom and democracy

Samuel P. Huntington makes this point well:

Individual authoritarian governments may rule and may have often ruled over people of diverse nationalities and cultures. Democracy, on the other hand, means that at a minimum people choose their rulers and that more broadly they participate in government in other ways. The question of identity thus becomes central: Who are the people? As Ivor Jennings observed, "the people cannot decide until someone decides who are the people". The decision as to who are the people may be the result of long-standing tradition, war and conquest, plebiscite or referendum, constitutional provision, or other causes, but it cannot be avoided.

In Northern Ireland, the period since the prorogation and subsequent dissolution of the Stormont Parliament in 1972 has been marked by alternating periods of authoritarian rule by Order in Council from Westminster and devolution to various forms of assembly (none of them resting on purely majoritarian bases and involving weighted majorities and power sharing), aborted constitutional conventions, a major insurrection by Protestant trade unionists, a number of referenda (one boycotted by Nationalists), a number of schemes and institutions to involve the Government of the Republic of Ireland in the affairs of the province, constant negotiations and attempts to evade the questions by fostering prosperity.

But the period has also been marked by the refusal of paramilitaries to decommission their weapons, the frequent murder of innocents, the suspension of civil liberties and distortion of the judicial process, censorship, restrictions on political freedoms and speech, and constant civil strife and warfare.

Democracy has not proved to be an easy answer - precisely because the two communities in the Six Counties are fundamentally at odds over who constitutes the demos. And the recent fruits of democracy - the polarisation of elections between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party, and the squeezing out of the constitutionalist parties - the UUP and the SDLP - show that elections do not provide an easy answer to the question of how to mould a civil community either.

The analogy with the Sunnis, Shia and Kurdish communities and the competing bases for legitimacy (religious, ethnic and political) in Iraq shouldn't be too hard to draw.

So I wouldn't get all triumphalist soon, Alexander.