There’s a few interesting comments on Arab Spring pessimism on the interwebs today. Here, writing in Foreign Affairs (stifle that yawn), Sheri Berman makes some interesting historical comparisons of political transformations, and points toward the unreasonable expectations many critics have placed on the world’s most recent democracy newborns.

In addition to blaming new democratic regimes for the sins of their authoritarian predecessors, critics also set absurdly high benchmarks for success, ones that lack any historical perspective. They interpret post-transition violence, corruption, confusion, and incompetence as signs that particular countries (or even entire regions or religions) are not ready for democracy, as if normal democratic transitions lead smoothly and directly to stable liberal outcomes and countries that stumble along the way must have something wrong with them. In fact, stable liberal democracy usually emerges only at the end of long, often violent struggles, with many twists, turns, false starts, and detours.