A New One on Me: Rotten Doors

Best thing I've read today is Monkey Cage, channeling Lucan Way on Kyrgistan as a "rotten door" link.

You know about this? I'm tempted to vulgarize it as a "syndrome:" the phenomenon of a state so weak that the revolutionaries find themselves pushing at a rotten door. The argument is that when a government falls too easily, it is not a good augury democracy: old relationships remain in place and the old elites find they can reestablish themselves pretty much as before. Way mentions "Georgia (2003), Haiti (2004), and Madagascar (2002, 2009), as well as Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and 2010," and there must be many others. I think in particular of Romania in 1989, where the "revolution" was over almost before it started (it was around Christmas; I was visiting relatives; I went out for a walk and when I came back it was done). Contrast, say, Poland, where a wannabee labor movement and a wannabee church were in place and trying their durndest when the Soviet puppets finally threw in their hands. Poland is a semi-functioning democracy today (and aren't we all?). Romania is pretty much what it was before.