Islam and socialim: two sides of the same coin?

When Gamal Abdel Nasser won a coup d'etat in Egypt, no doubt in his wildest imagination would he have imagined that the reins of the country would eventually pass to Hosni Mubarak, much less what the country would become under his thirty year rule. Nasser's rule in Egypt swept socialism in Egypt, but also inspired similarly inclined regimes all over the region, not least in the neighbouring Syria where Baathism became an ideologic mirror image of Egypt's political and social regime.

Those were the days of USSR's glory in the Middle East: the era of proclaimed sufficiency, of industrial substitution and the promotion of "egalitarian"experiment à la Sovietique. But they were as numbered as Nasser's life and when he passed away in 1970s, the socialist experiment in Egypt, one of the most populous countries in the Middle East, was buried with him. Sadat, Minister of State under Nasser, to a great surprise of the latter's admirers, did a U-turn from his predecessor's politics, by concluding peace with Israel and downgrading the relationship with the all powerful Soviet Union. 

The price of his decisions and the political whirlwind that resulted in the arrival of Hosni Mubarak on the throne of Egypt is well known. Mubarak's arrival resulted in a fair degree of continuity from Sadat's foreign policy, notably in terms of the peace treaty with Israel and on further rapprochement with the United States at the expense of the USSR. Over the next few decades, the Egyptian economy was operated by the ruling apparatus, as a quasi-oligarchical, quasi-capitalist regime. 

At a closer look, it showed the vestiges of both post-Soviet re-organisation towards market economy - concentration of economic power in the hands of the few - and some crippled version of social democracy through, for example, handouts to the poor through a very inefficient subsidy system. In the five years prior to the demise of Mubarak, Egypt was an active privatiser and an active promoter of foreign investment which was seen by the government as a key mechanism from brining greater know how in the country, while helping to create employment. We all know how that story ended. The word privatisation in Egypt now is all but blasphemy, and not without reason.

At the same time, the rule of Sadat and Mubarak also coincided with a feature common to communist regimes, that is, repression of religious rights. The Soviet Union has been a stellar model of this, wiping out centuries of religious practice among its subjects in one broad sweep and all but erasing any evidence of worship in the country. While the current Putin government is clearly in bed with the orthodox church, this cheap gimmick is hardly confusing seasoned political observers of Russia. Putin needs the church as much as the nobles needed it in the middle ages to keep the population believing and obedient. 

Not only in the USSR has communism proven difficult to conjugate with religion. In the Middle East, both Nasser and Assad - inspired by the promise of equal right and power to the "peasants" - also snubbed religion. Interestingly, while Mubarak basically rejected most of Nasser's political orientations, he obediently followed his steps when it came to the rejection of religion in political circles and arguably much further. Islamist parties, notably the Muslim Brootherhood, who advocated greater social equality and greater role for religion were driven under and out for decades, despite their allegedly similar social objectives. 

But history has a tendency to play dirty tricks. Neither Nasser, nor Sadat, not Mubarak could imagine that they would be followed by Morsi. A common thread in the very distant politics of Nasser and Morsi is that as socialists and and islamists, they promote egalitarian ideals and promise power and economic re-distribution towards the less advantaged. And while it would be easy to argue that all politicians tend to campaign on these type of slogans due to their easy marketability with the masses, the reality is more nuanced than that. Mubarak,  for example, had never seriously stressed social equality, even if could not renege on bread and cooking oil subsidies, lest the country explode in a wide-scale revolt as it did during the 2008 food crisis. 

Beyond the Middle East, in continental Europe, the most socialist-oriented government, leaving aside the Scandinavian social-democratic republics, is arguably in France. France has ironically also been aiming to promote and preserve at all costs its "liacité" model, which presumes no religious representation in politics and discourages religious displays in public life more generally. The new French president, Francois Hollande, currently riding the wave of popular disillusionment with his incompetence, won the recent elections by a tiny margin entirely based on his promise of greater equality and "power to the people". He is actively delivering on the promise to wipe out "the rich" in France, who are indeed following his instructions and are leaving the country like rats from a sinking ship. 

There is a certain similarity between François Hollande and Mohammed Morsi. Both have campaigned on unrealistic promises and by encouraging outrange at "excess" by popular masses further by pointing a finger at the abuses of their predecessor. Both have promised equality. Both have promised a quick change. And change they have delivered, but what kind of change? While there are some clear differences of conviction and style between Morsi and Hollande, the change they have delivered so far can be best characterised as stagnation. 

They have not been able to deliver on their "social" promises because they revert to the historically-proven bankrupt ideology that beyond the inspired pages of Karl Marx has not materialised in a successful economic order anywhere in the world. Their world order pretends that the economy is a third wheel in a bicycle that they can pedal on two wheels. Morsi has imagined that Egypt can make do without foreign investors and that unemployment can be plugged by governmental jobs. Hollande, also a fan of creating jobs by presidential decrees instead of encouraging foreign companies to come to France or at least French companies not to leave, thinks he lives in an autarchy. 

Both are delusional. With or without religion, they seem to have arrived at similar outcomes. The next few months, in both countries will be interesting to watch, for entirely different reasons. But one theme that will have to be common to both, lest the countries follow the path of Greece and declare bankruptcy, is the return to the politics of their predecessors: a welcome wave to the businesses and yes, the "rich" that run them. In the irony of this world then, is that social democracy and islamic democracy might just have the same economic outcomes.

On monarchies and companies: what Middle East has to do with corporate governance

In political science, the debate about relative benefits of monarchy as opposed to other forms of political organisation such as a single or multiple party system has been raging for a while. And let us not be mistaken, this debate has not much focused on Sweden, Monaco or the United Kingdom as opposed to France, the United States or     Germany. In Europe, the dying breed of kingdoms, aka the "symbolic kingdom",  remains of interest only because from time to time photos of naked royalty appear in local tabloids, reminding everyone that even royalty can do remarkably stupid things, making us feel better about ourselves.

The symbolic kingdoms do not unfortunately light up the imagination of political scientists or frankly, for that matter, anyone else except perhaps for some small minority of the French that still hope for a demise of the Republic and the rightful - in their view - restoration of the French dynasty. For that, they have even located the heir to the French throne who is apparently anxious to resume his duties interrupted over two hundred years ago. Aside from the imaginative French, the European kingdoms don't do much as a litmus test for what a monarchical system in Europe would be like as opposed to the multiparty system (which the Americans have quickly rebranded into a much simpler, American kind of good vs bad Bushism, the mighty democracy).

Without going into the whole debate whether we actually have a democratic system in Europe or North America, which is worth to have but can hardly be squeezed into a few hundred words, what is clear is that the only interesting place where monarchies have not only survived but where they have been stable is the Middle East. About half of the countries in the region are reigned by kings, and the royal hold on the region stretches from the far away oil-awash Gulf sheikdoms to North Africa (Morocco) and the Levant (Jordan). Commonalities between them are actually few and far between.

With the unrest that has swept the region in the past year, the question of why Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and not Saudi Arabia, Oman or Kuwait has resurfaced again, and not without justification. Why Tunisia which had a relatively higher standard of living and in some sense greater political liberties than Morocco? Why Egypt, which shares many fundamental economic and social challenges than the neighboring Jordan, which albeit    more than ten times smaller demographically, is definitely not ten times more wealthy or much more egalitarian in its distribution of wealth?

These are the question that have resurfaced in the turbulent seas, brought onshore by the Arab Spring and left us to ponder once again this old beast in new clothes. Only last week, Marc Lynch was asking in the latest edition of Foreign Policy: Does Monarchy Matter?, arguing against what he terms the "monarchical exception". For many like Lynch, monarchy does not matter, what matters are the crutches that have for the past few decades been propping it up: oil. According to this view, monarchies and monarchs are not that different from anyone else, even if they find themselves special.

Some point that even oil could not help Bahrain spiral down the same route as Egypt and Tunisia earlier this year and friends in Manama say that the whiff of tear gas has stubbornly installed itself in the streets of the capital, even as the government has purged Shias from virtually all posts of consequence. Even in the stable Saudi Arabia, which has poured an estimated 130 billion dollars into creating public sector posts and increasing subsidies on already subsidised staples and petrochemical products (which are already sold at a fraction of their actual cost), demonstrations in the restful (and Shia) Dammam are now reported.

Could this fly in the face of monarchical resilience theory? Is the invitation by the Gulf Cooperation Council for Morocco and Jordan to join the club of remaining Middle Eastern monarchs, all by the way proclaiming themselves to be somehow descendants of the Prophet, a last ditch attempt to hold on to power in the same way that Assad is clinging on to his in Syria-now-turned-into-battlefield? In other words, is there reason to believe that the monarchs are going down the same drain where the other now-dictators (yesterday-key-allies) have just recently spiraled?

Not so quick. While the wind of the Arab Spring has certainly blown over the Gulf and other Middle East monarchies, it looks to have just roughed up some sand in the desert without much affecting the Bedouins. They have adjusted their outfits, made some noises about political reform (aka Kuwait and Morocco), and got back on their horses, head up and nose up in the air. No gruesome photos of captured dictators, reports of constant clashes with the police, videos of wailing women complaining of their husbands being detained for no apparent reason. The movie set is back to normal, no change of actors is required.

Regardless of whether this will or will not continue, the lessons of monarchical versus single party (aka individual) control, leaves much to ponder over, not only for the future of the Middle East but for the future of the civilization more generally. For the reasons that monarchs in the Middle East, and indeed elsewhere, tend to survive longer   is that their incentive to squeeze the country for all it has is balanced with their long term political survival, which hinges on some reinvestment and some returns to the population to keep grievances at bay. The monarchs, after all, want some oil to left for their followers, while the autocrats fail to have this longer term vision and tend to upset the balance quicker by getting their hands on more and faster. The case of Ben Ali is perhaps the most poignant.

You might think that the Middle East is far away, that oil is not scheduled to deplete for another few decades, and decide that monarchy and bedouins are not that interesting after all. But before you do that, consider that monarchies and companies, although they appear to have nothing in common, do have something very much to share. The long term perspective. This year, we have not just seen major events in the Arab world, we have also seen persistent and violent demonstrations on the Wall Street and its equivalent in every major North American or European city, bemoaning financial capitalism and its obsession with hard and fast returns.

Much like single party leaders the type of Ben Ali or Assad, the CEOs of major financial companies have proven to be obsessed with milking the cow as fast as they possibly could. Neither suspected that they could be thrown out, investigated or prosecuted for doing so. Now the tide has turned and every misstep by a bank CEO or even the lowliest of its employees is scrutinised in large print in the Financial Times to the point that the bankers themselves are voluntarily giving up their bonuses and talking to the regulators about better oversight of executive compensation.

Perhaps the capitalists remaining in the game should also revisit the monarchical exception theory to better understand why some manage to remain in power over generations, while others barely manage to make it through one generation. It is often said that the "old" capitalists, the likes of Henry Fords and the Rothchilds,  had a longer term vision that included their employees and suppliers in the picture, as opposed to trying to squeeze them for their last penny.

While today, the buzzwords such as ESG, social investment and inclusive growth are all there, the reality does not follow suit. Looking at evening news while indulging on toasts and caviar,  today's managers should remember that not sharing their caviar might at best leave them fighting for their life (aka Assad), and at worst might just dry up that caviar source altogether (aka Ben Ali). So, monarchy matters but not only for the monarchs after all.

Centers of gravity 

New York, London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo. The list of world class cities is not that much longer than that. On that list are those cities, where everyone knows someone, everyone has a thought on some great place to go to, a place with a dear memory, a scene from a film that stroke a particular note, a small nostalgia in their heart. These are cities with which we have a permanent-and-hate relationship in that they swallow us while we are on premises, exhaust us till our last breath with their vastness, but constantly enthrall us with their ability to innovate, yet remain loyal to their established style.

These are the cities always worth a visit: rain or shine, cheap or expensive, downtown or in the periphery, under ring or left wing governments. And they continue to faithfully attract crowds of tourists of all kinds, from the hippie backpackers fitting the exact number of pairs of underwear for the days in town, to the mass tourists sightseeing from the comfort of their mega-sized buses equipped with multilingual travel guides, to the rich and famous with access to the trendiest spots. 

Over the years, other cities have entered into the race for the new travel destination hotspot, and may have, for a second, eclipsed our old time favorites. With eyes full of awe, we have flocked to Bali, Beijing, Dubai, Buenos Aires, Moscow for some Russian chic, some Latin American passion, some Middle Eastern luxury. And sometimes, some of us, have come back, but most have finished that book and moved on to the next genre in the anticipation of a surprise, a novelty, of that tingling sensation of awe, even if it last just a few seconds.

In search for that fleeting tingle, travel guides have tripped over each other to dig up the new jewel, lost somewhere in the middle of some unknown ocean, but eventually we've run of oceans to explore. And we've more or less ran out of up-and-coming cities likes of Istanbul or Dubai and we've gotten bored again. The travel industry went back to the drawing board and have over the years, come up, to their great credit, with scores of cities and villages with resorts, boutique hotels, temporarily unspoiled nature and rare species of animals. 

The competition in the industry has heated up to boiling temperatures. Dubai has poured cash - air-conditioning open space - to build what is now the highest building in the world, the Bourj Al Khalifa. Butan has thought of restricting the number of annual visas for tourists in order to make them feel exclusive. Others are pondering as to how they can up their game in emerging forums such as the Intelligent Cities Summit (whoever thought of that name!), where urban architects, designers, construction geniuses and others get to ponder how to make their city the best place to live. 

The truth, however, is that our choice of a city to grow old in has virtually nothing to do with our choice of a city to visit. Indeed, one could argue that they are the opposite and the fact that retirees often move from large urban centers to a countryside setting is an iron proof of that. For most of us avid travelers, the tingle does not arise from seeing roses in a remote garden, unless our grandmother was an avid gardener, but at a sight something novel. Perhaps Intelligent Cities is not what we are after in the end. 

What we are all after is novelty and novelty at all cost: at the cost of risk, at the cost of extreme temperatures, at the cost of understanding nothing in foreign languages, and of course at the cost of some serious money. While Kabul and Baghdad might indeed be a tad too far for most of us, tourists are now flocking to places as improbable as North Korea or Burma. Some even drop in places as unconventional as Reykjavik, which after the Icelandic meltdown, has become unsurprisingly cheap and surprisingly trendy.

Since the transport industry has banalized the crossing of continents, we have discovered and categorized cities into top destinations for honeymoons, water sports, spas, sex tourism, beautiful people, natural waterfalls, parties. And yet, les grandes classiques have survived the discoveries of destinations with rare animals, cheap sex, ethnic food and around-the-clock sun. They have shaken off the cheap copycat attempts such as Las Vegas or Tianduchang (a Chinese city built as a copy of Paris).

Their reputation stands, completely unfettered, in sight of these discoveries and up-and-coming competitors. They are the cities of their own class, of the same class, as the British nobility or the Hollywood superstars who no longer have to prove their credibility to anyone else. And while they are no longer the economic powerhouses of our century, that no longer matters because they have already passed that stage, created their persona, and moved on, leaving the Moscows of this world to repaint their facade, the Beijings of this world to create their persona and the Beiruts of this world to rebuild.

So, why do we always flock for more of the same while looking for novelty? The answer to this question lies perhaps as much in the uniqueness of each of these cities, as in their ability to cater to all tastes, from the most unsophisticated, to the most demanding. To their ability to pander to inequality, to appall, as much as enthrall, to surprise as much as exhaust, to be anything but remain predictable. To their obvious inequality. Only in London can one eat a mountain of quality Indian food for under 5 pounds and spot a 150,000 pound pot of face cream at Harrods. Only in New York can you access any cuisine in the world and speak every language in the world. 

These cities, to the horror of their bourgeoisie, have swallowed waves of immigration that have rendered them more colorful, more socially complex, more dangerous, but also more multifaceted than those cities who have sent their native Chinese, Mexican, or Moroccans there. These new arrivals have had to fit in the style of the house, be it Dior, Abercrombie and Fitch, or Versace, and weave in the fabric of their host their own influence, without disrupting the grand design of the tissue. 

The result have been cities that - much like the fashion houses - have been able to retain their persona, even faced with bouts of bad behavior as was the case of Dior when John Galliano went of the cuff. So, next time someone tells you that Bodrum is the next Saint Tropez or that Saint Tropez is better value for money than Paris, think again. And again. And again. For some things old are still better than a million things new. And that's precisely why we gravitate there, as Newton told us already a while back.

Echos of the Cold War in the Middle East

First it was a burning of a fruit vendor. Then it became the Arab Spring which morphed into what some called the Arab Firestorm. While the reversal of regimes in Egypt and Tunisia proved almost too easy - like flicking a fat and lazy bee off the flower on which it's been sucking for too long - the overall transition process in the region has proven far from smooth.

In Libya, the "Western powers" had to intervene, at the insistence of the French who  were so keen to hide Qaddafi's donations to the leading political party that they bombed some civilian targets. Unlike the LSE, the French found refunding donations to the political campaign of the former president back to the Libyans a little tricky. Today, news from Libya are a confusing hodgepot of reversal to sharia law, election of a relatively liberal party, all amidst random shootings and tribal politics.

In Bahrain, the Saudis used the widely known Jonny Walker bridge to provide military support to "calm" things down. They did so on Thursday so as to not interrupt the flow of Saudis going to get drunk in Bahrain on Friday. Everyone was made to understand that this time, the Arab Spring had gone too far into the heartland of oil monarchies. No one was particularly interested in supporting those Shias who might be oppressed in Bahrain, but who are still as Shia as those Ayatollahs and a certain Party of God that they support in Lebanon.

By the time the Syrian soup starting to boil over, all the cooks in the kitchen had their hands full elsewhere. Besides, all conceded that Syria represents a more difficult nut to crack. At first, many were reluctant to believe that what was going on in Syria was really going on. For one, visitors to Damascus were shielded from events elsewhere in the country. Pundits wondered if little Bashar could really be following the steps of the big Hafez? Could he really perpetrate another Hama?

On the surface of it, the well-spoken Bashar with his Luboutin-outfitted wife does not seem to fit the bill of a ruthless murder. And yet, regardless of whether it's him or his brother behind what has become the bloodiest repression in the Middle East, this reality is no longer disputed by anyone except for the "rais". The familiar statement: "it's not me, it's the foreign elements" no longer sticks. Virtually the only excuse the Syrian regime has not pulled out of the hat yet is Al Qaida.

Bashar can clearly bleed the longest, at least in the foreseeable future. He has proven that much. Kofi Annan has flown in and out with no result whatsoever. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton are probably next in line to propose a three-step solution to the conflict from the comfort of a five star hotel in the nearby Beirut. In the meantime, while the international community wines and pleads with Bashar, Russia and China are playing power games.

The Chinese see human rights as an unnecessary luxury and anyways, lacking respect for human dignity domestically, they do not feel in position to teach others any lessons. That's not very helpful but at least humble. An admission of their own problems of a sorts, backed up by the hope that they can offload some more cheap souvenirs made in China and decorated in Syria to sell as authentic to unsuspected tourists.

Russia's position on Syria is not driven by the same considerations. Of course, having just orchestrated an electoral victory for Putin in the most obvious fashion, it is not exactly keen on supporting democracy anywhere. Revenues from arms sales to Syria do not help convince its leadership otherwise, but let us not be naive, that is not the real reason for unconditional Russian support of Syria.

And unconditional it is. So much so that Russians would risk having their men shoot down a Turkish warplane, for which Assad Junior had promptly apologized along the lines of: "oops, we thought it was Israeli"! How comforting. 11 Russian warships are now heading in the direction of Syria, and the printing of Syrian currency is now also done by the Russians. At the same time, foreign Minister Lavrov stages a farce of receiving Syrian opposition in Moscow to discuss the unfolding situation in the hope of bringing it "to a more realistic and constructive positions". Constructive for Bashar, he seems to have forgotten to complete his sentence.

And yet, it's not that the Russians have such complicity with the Syrians. After all, the level of Russian respect for Muslims in general and for Arabs in particular has never been particularly high and can be illustrated by their treatment of their former Central Asian republics. Russia has re-entered the Middle East like a possessive lover wishes to re-claim his ex-girlfriend. It was a major superpower that played in the region through various proxy agents during the Cold War. Putin wants to show that those days are not over. The US might decide to bomb Iraq, invade Afghanistan, support Bahrain, but Russia can still pour the salt on the wound that hurts the most. Checkmate.

Women: the coming of age

Every product has an expiration date. According to my doctor's nonchalant claim, the expiration date of an average woman 25 years old. It’s a nice round number that rolls off the tongue: a quarter of a century. Indeed, it could be worse. In places like Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, I am sure it is much lower, but somehow, I don’t find that particularly comforting.

The fact that in our very modern world, women are still under pressure to reproduce while they are increasingly expected to fill more seats at the same table as the big boys, is unjust. I suppose big boys expect us to thank them for opening their club to us, but this is hardly a relief if the only way for women to crawl to this summit is by making the baby understand that the blackberry is the only toy that mommy cannot give up.

I should come clean and specify that my doctor did not exactly say 25 is our official expiry date. This was more of a point by which women are best to procreate. Push the limits much beyond this date, and you run all kinds of fertility risks. His look tells me: “you do what you like my dear, but consider yourself warned.” I walk out of his office resenting a mixture of resent and gratitude. I have been warned.

This advice might come as a surprise to most professional women, particularly in Europe, where formal education - assuming one wishes to get a Masters or a PhD instead of baking cookies at home - is completed at 30 if not later. That is, at least a whole 5 years after past the ideal age to procreate. These 5 years might sound like a minor difference, but according to this esteemed professional and to be fair many of his compatriots, it’s a “procreational” lifetime.

In 5 years, we might be able to make a baby step in our career, but we can certainly make a not very baby-like 4 year old. That’s perhaps where our efforts are best put to use. After all, at 25, we are lucky if we have managed to get some sort of a bachelor’s degree, which in France is about sufficient to babysit or to sell cookies. So, basically all we need to know before starting a family. Or at least, this is how it goes according to my doctor.

Looking from his imposing black spectacles, he examined my face briefly when I timidly posed the delicate question. “You can start as soon as you have found a suitable papa” was his as his answer. You’ve got to give him some credit not beating around the bush. This coming from a man who is over 50 and whose last child is 3 years old is a little difficult to swallow but I try. I remind myself his wife is close to 20 years younger than him and that he seems to follow his own advice.

Fair enough. What is not fair is that at the same time as women are expected to step up to the bar and compete professionally with men, we are expected to do so in parallel with nursing. So much for equal opportunities. Actually, the opportunities have become less equal. Even some 20 years ago, a woman was expected to deliver a baby and keep it fed, clean and happy, now we are expected to breastfeed the baby between a board meeting or keep it happy during a work trip to another part of the world.

If my doctor’s prognosis is right, it seems we are stuck with a bad bargain. So, perhaps we should stop looking for vaccines for bird flu, and focus on what matters: prolonging women’s fertility to the time when they have the desire and, not unimportantly, the means to start a family.  This would not only lower the realistic expectations that women can excel in management positions while at the same time popping out offspring, it would also release the pressure on women – to put it as bluntly as my doctor did – to find a suitable papa.

Brushing all these deep thoughts aside, I rush out on the street, put my oversized sunglasses on and try to console myself. “I have no yet expired!”, I tell myself, mentally arguing against his advice. By the way, that advice delivered over a 5 minute consultations had cost me over 100 euros. I wonder if I would be able to afford that if I had my first baby by 25 as he recommended. I also wonder if I pay more, if I would be able to find another doctor who would raise my expiry date closer to 35, and who would ideally not let me linger in his waiting room for one hour. After all, I am not paid the big bucks for flipping women’s magazines in doctors' lounges!

Wanted: democracy. Or is it?

2011 and so far 2012 have seen some quite unprecedented demands for democracy all over the world. Ironically, most of these demands were manifested not at the behest, nor even with great support of the usual "international pressure". What is also interesting about these movements for greater political rights, dignity, and freedom of expression, is that they belied the reductionist labels that we managed to quickly slap on them.

The Arab Spring has now been going for over a year. The protests in Russia are just the beginning of a long road which will hopefully allow the Russian people to chose someone other than Putin. And that is not to speak of the painfully slow, but no less important transitions that we are starting to see in North Korea, Burma and other places on which the international community has all but given up. Some of them are edged on by hereditary politics, but most are not.

All of these are important transitions the consequences of which will not be known for years, hence the reluctance to celebrate the democratic Egypt, democratic Libya and the wariness to get further involved in Iraq, Bahrain, Afghanistan or Syria to help them transition to another form of government, with contested elections. The fear of chaos and islamism is omnipresent. This fear is as natural as should have been obvious the consequences of political contestability in countries with no tradition of political pluralism.

After all, today's Gaza is not only the product of Hamas - it is, most and foremost the product of a democratic transition in the Middle East that was internationally supported and encouraged. Unlike Gaza and Iraq, and to some extent Libya which were a product of external meddling in local politics and actors vying for natural resources or broader political powers, the political changes we've seen over past year are entirely home made, with no imported ingredients.

Another incredible dimension to these transitions is that protests the Egypt and Tunisia have inspired, though not motivated, similar movements in far away places such as Russia and Bahrain. Even Palestinians got so encouraged that the normally timid Abu Mazen was emboldened to make a historic speech in front of the UN Security Council asking for national autonomy for his politically and territorially divided Palestinian National Authority.

The unprecedented backlash to financial capitalism in New York, London and other European capitals might have also been inspired and in turn motivated new political movements elsewhere. While it is debatable to what extent these movements have been mutually reinforcing, there is no debate that through them, political actors have tried to reconquer the their political or economic rights, to move the equilibrium to some elusive point of greater equality between the top political and economic echelons and the bottom.

Although due to their entirely different socio-economic contexts, the protestors reclaimed different goals and objectives: greater shareholder say on executive pay in the US, greater subsidies on staples in Egypt, better employment opportunities in Tunisia, the underlying rationale of these was fundamentally not so different. With first round of presidential elections undergoing today in France, the same rhetoric of greater equality of better redistribution is echoed in the campaign promises of most parties.

Politicians are all promising to somehow undo the spiderweb in which France is all but a lost insect: to re-enforce borders, re-industrialise, expel the immigrants, return to the franc. And yet, it seems that at least some French are too exhausted and disillusioned by past elections: 20 percent of them did not bother to vote at all, others did so barely to limit the potential damage made if an opposing party won. Whatever the reasoning of individual voters may be, the democratic rights do not appear to be appreciated by all.

Reflecting on the past year, one cannot help but wonder what it is that leads some nations raise up for greater political liberties, while others - most often those that have them - to ignore them or take them for granted. Is it possible that all along it is not democracy people have been after all along, but some sort of a more narrow and universal categories of socio-economic rights that are fundamental to their personal quality of life and that they do not see as linked to broader systems of political organisation? If so, is electoral democracy the best way to respond to such expectations?

Capitalism: not quite dead

The papers these days are full of eulogies of capitalism. Our praised and cherished ideology, economic organization and social order is widely believed as having failed to deliver. We are all almost as sad as if we were in North Korea and Kim Jong Il was announced dead. The financial sector was under regulated and has collapsed. The inequalities are suddenly found have reached unacceptable levels. People all over the world, from placed as unrelated as Egypt, China, and Russia are protesting against their own version of Wall Street, their own symbol of inequality.

But is it the end of capitalism? Or are we burying a corpse that is still alive and kicking? I would argue the latter. What is however, true, is that the system of capitalism, from the poorest to the wealthiest of countries, from the cleanest to the most corrupt, has in many cases turned to the model of "state capitalism". The Economist, with their meaty special report on this issue last week, is not the only one to have picked up on it. Whereas from the fall of the Soviet Union onwards, the whole world signed with relief that communist order and with it the role of the state in the economy was over, the reality is, as often, a slightly more complicated shade of grey.

In the United States and in Europe, the rescue of financial institutions has left the government with huge state-owned assets and their correspondent liabilities. In America, while the Republicans accuse Obama of "socialist policies" for his long needed reform of the Medicare system, should instead take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves who pushed for the creation of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac (Newt Gingrich who got paid over a million for consulting to the companies), which are now entirely state-owned and do not stand a chance of regaining their private status anytime soon.

There are destinations of known "state-driven capitalism" such as China, Venezuela or Cuba. And then, there are those who have only recently joined the ranks. In Tunisia, the new government had to nationalise over two hundred companies in which Ben Ali and Trabelsi families had illegitimate stakes and has even created a commission to decide what to do with these companies. In Egypt, some confiscations, although on apparently a smaller scale, have also occurred. These developments have officially titled these countries towards the "state capitalism" end of the scale, but the reality is that unofficially, they were there all along.

Interests aligned with the Mubarak and Ben Ali families have been profiting from state contracts since decades. In places such as Lebanon, the state effectively outsources its numerous functions - from telecommunications to electricity provision - to itself. In many cases, the state-owned enterprises which the government refuses to privatise outsource many of their vital functions, which raises about the rationale for their existence. More interestingly, many of these outsourced functions are contracted out to companies owned by government Ministers and other high level officials.

In the nearby Dubai and the broader Gulf region, state capitalism is thriving, despite the blow dealt by the ongoing restructuring of Dubai World. Dubai still owes much (an estimated 10-12 billion USD a year) of repayments to its various creditors, and Abu Dhabi is reportedly not happy, despite the world's tallest tower bearing the name of it's Sheikh Al Khalifa. UAE government owns everything from real estate-companies to taxis, to sharks in the aquarium in Dubai mall, and needless to say - all of the land in the Emirates. Only a tiny sliver of real estate in the Emirates can be owned by foreigners.

Increasingly, governments of GCC, Chinese and other emerging market sovereign wealth funds, are beginning to own some serious assets not only locally, but also abroad, effectively exporting their own breed of state capitalism with all its benefits and disadvantages. One side effect of this is that it is now difficult to tell what is state owned and what is not. Where does the Sheikh end and the official government domain begins is apparently difficult to tell, as have learned all to well Dubai's creditors.

On the other side of the world, in Russia, the political system of organisation, driven by the old politbureau, otherwise known as the KGB, could not be more different than in the Gulf sheikdoms' and yet the outcome is not so different. Since Putin's arrival, the oligarchs have gotten in line with the government and whatever is not operated by the huge state corporations and the spiraling empire of government controlled entities, is operated by the oligarchs which can effectively considered if not as the direct offspring of the politbureau, then their slightly more distant relatives.

And yet, nothing in these systems is different from the gold old capitalism. Money is being made, labour is being exploited, rents are distributed in a very much unequal way. The difference is that, in this new model, the state is part of the capitalist system, in one way or the other, alongside with private sector actors, or sometimes leading the way. Capitalism and statism are no longer mutually exclusive. Officially or unofficially, the buck stops with the government. This is, my friends, capitalism 2.0. For once, and regretfully, Putin may not be wrong.