Overcoming the hard legacy of dictatorships

In an article in which I recently commented the current political situation of a particular country, I argue that after political revolution or transition, depending on the radical character of the changes, the new regime often continues to carry harsh legacies of the previous, authoritarian regime.
Countries after big changes elect new leaders, introduce new institutions and new procedures, adopt new constitutions and other organic laws within a period of few months, but overcoming the cultural legacy might take generations.

Dictatorships motivate their citizens to engage in zero-sum games, as they provide no space for win-win approaches. The habit of zero sum games becomes a cultural factor that prevails for a long period even after the political and constitutional changes.

Have a look at Libya as an example. The dictatorship of Colonel Gaddafi was one of the most horrible in the world. Now I am discussing a minor factor, namely, that during Gaddafi’s rule, the city of Benghazi was fully abandoned. Gaddafi feared and hated the city (in 2011 it became obvious that he had good reasons to fear it) so much, that the city hardly received any public money and was deprived from the country’s oil wealth. After the revolution, Benghazi, the capital city of the Libyan revolution, could have made a generous offer to Tripoli, the constitutional capital city of Libya, for a fair distribution of the national wealth. Instead, now Benghazi wants everything, the whole oil wealth, and former leaders of the revolution are ready to go to civil war against Tripoli and the central government.

In Egypt under the rule of Mubarak, oppression targeted all, but the Muslim Brotherhood suffered the most. After the revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood won the elections and Muslim Brother Mursi became president. The Muslim Brothers could also have made a generous offer to the opposition for an inclusive political system. Instead, Mursi and the Muslim Brothers thought that now their time has come, abandoned any potential partners and ignored any ideas that came from other players, until the military stopped this process.

Both examples demonstrate the attitude of zero-sum games inherited from dictatorships. Much time is needed to change such deep cultural attitudes.
Taiwan, however, provided a refreshing exception. After the fall of the Chiang Kai-Shek regime, Taiwan had also been deeply divided between two parties, the KMT and the DPP. In each elections since the democratisation of the country, it was either the KMT or the DPP that wanted to take it all. During the latest municipal elections, a new leader emerged, who called for citizens of the capital city, Taipei, to move on from the political divisions and unite. Ko Wen-je stood for the post of mayor of Taipei as an independent candidate, and although he accepted the support of the DPP party, in his messages he used non-partisan language. He won with 60 percent of the votes in a city that had previously always voted for the KMT. Citizens of Taipei showed that political parties are essential parts of a democratic system, but people will eventually be fed up by zero-sum games and want to see political parties and politicians playing win-win.

In Taiwan, citizens taught political parties the win-win lesson in a relatively short time. In other countries, such as Egypt and Libya, the same process may take a longer time. But the time will come, inevitably. The imperative to help political players to engage in win-win games provides a lesson also to the international democratic community: that process matters as much as content does. This is the reason why the Community of Democracies also concentrates more and more on the process when working in countries under democratic transition.