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Murtaza Hussain
@mazmhussain
I have to say that I am against revolutions; or to put it more accurately I do. not romanticize them. History shows that most revolutions wind of making things worse, and exacerbating the grievances that gave rise to them in the first place. I struggle to think of many revolutions that wound up creating an unambiguously better social order – I would say that 80% make things worse. The American revolution seems like an arguable exception but that is because it was not really a revolution but an anticolonial war. My skepticism of revolutions is not a defense of cruel or corrupt ancien regimes. However the way that I see it revolution is not some kind of conscious progressive turning of the laws of history to be celebrated but more like a tragedy, wherein a society that is under tremendous pressure finally breaks open in a manner that usually generates more hardship ahead. My views are very much informed by being a personal observer of the Arab Spring and seeing how great hopes transformed into heartbreak.
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TS
@tsuipen
Is the failure that of revolutions or the political process that appears after the revolution. I think of India and Nepal where the constituent assemblies did a very good (if incomplete) job of encoding into law the core demands of their independence and republican movements. Contrast that with Egypt, where the lawmaking process during the two CAs seems to have been rushed, not very inclusive, and very stage managed. Nepal had a legislature-parliament with 601 members (selected through a mix of FPTP and PR seats), whereas Egypt seems to have had a handpicked separate body (more of a committee than an assembly). Russia had similar problems where they rushed the constitution, were unable to manage their differences, nearly ended up in civil war, and ended up creative a super presidency.
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