Guardian: What do Ukraine, Thailand, Venezuela and Bosnia all have in common?

[pampango]

Recipe for revolution: what do Ukraine, Syria, Turkey et al have in common?

At the same time, it is plain that in the modern, interconnected world, grassroots uprisings cross-fertilise and often have similarities. Turkey, Ukraine, Thailand, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina are all middle-income democracies with elected leaders besieged by people angry at misgovernment, corruption and economic sclerosis. These days it is no longer just dictators who have something to fear from the crowd.

The belief that violently propelled revolutionary change is transnational, even universal in nature, and uniform in origin and aspiration, is seductive, persistent and historically absurd. Its antecedents include the lost era of Marx and Lenin when the "workers of the world" espoused the dictatorship of the proletariat. Wordsworth's joyful reaction to the French revolution – "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven!" – , which he fondly believed threatened the ancien regime across all Europe, shows how lasting, powerful – and illusory – is the idea of ubiquitous, socially-levelling, personally liberating rebellion.

Seen this way, Erdoğan appeared not so much a lesser version of Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych - he has not, so far, resorted to shooting demonstrators - and more the Euro-Asian equivalent of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, who also stands accused of trampling civic freedoms. As in Thailand, Maduro's most vehement critics hail from the middle class who revile the so-called Bolivarian socialist revolution of his mentor, the late Hugo Chávez.

As in Cambodia and Bangladesh, two other restless nations, a rapidly deteriorating economy, food prices and high crime rates are also key elements in unrest in Venezuela, said analyst Juan Carlos Hidalgo. "Despite receiving over $1tn in oil revenues since 1999, the government has run out of cash and now relies heavily on printing money to finance itself. The result is the highest inflation rate in the world." Venezuela is, however, no Ukraine, other analysts say.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/recipe-revolution-ukraine-thailand-venezuela-turkey

The author also blames "mismanaged economies, corrupt privatisations, high youth unemployment and croneyism among the ruling elites" as causes of popular discontent. He does not level blame on foreign bogeymen of the left or right.

In many ways it is good to see democracies come under pressure from the street. Many of them democratic in name but do not function for the good of the people they represent but for the good of the societal elite or the government elites themselves (often one and the same, anyway).