World Policy Institute

Arab Democracy: Dismal Prospects Author(s): Lisa Anderson Source: World Policy Journal, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Fall, 2001), pp. 53-60 Published by: The MIT Press and the World Policy Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40209762 Accessed: 11/09/2010 06:10
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is and PublicAffairs, ColumbiaUniversity. Lisa Anderson dean of the Schoolof International

Arab Democracy:Dismal Prospects

Lisa Anderson

Why is the Arab world so conspicuously inhospitable to liberal democracy?A decade after the end of the Cold War, when much of the world has embraced democratic institutions, most Arab regimes have abandoned even token deference to democratic institutions. Unhappily symptomatic was the sentencing this past spring by an Egyptian state security court of a 62-year-old scholar,Saad Eddin Ibrahim, to seven years in prison. Ibrahim faced charges of treason and embezzlement when his highly regarded Ibn Khaldun Center published studies on voter registration and the persecution of Coptic Christians, and worse, for accepting independent funding from several Europeanfoundations. Given the abundance of such incidents, one can reasonably wonder whether Arab democracy is an impossible dream. Fifteen years ago, well before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the bombing of Iraq in the Gulf War, and the signing of the Oslo peace accords, the Harvardpolitical scientist Samuel P. Huntington expressed the conventional wisdom about the prospects for democratizationaround the world in his essay, "Will More Countries Become DemoIn cratic?"1 specifying what seemed to him the essential preconditions for progress to self-rule, Huntington disputed an earlier thesis put forwardby fellow political scientist Dankwart Rustow, that only one condition was essential, a shared national identity.2 Other factors were as vital, retorted Huntington, first among them being economic growth. He identified an economic "zone of transition" corresponding to the
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upper third of the World Bank's middleincome countries- in which traditional authoritarianismled the way either to communism or to democracy.He further maintained that a market economy and a bourgeoisie appear to be necessaryif not sufficient for the emergence of democracy.Huntington's assessment of the cultural context of the Middle East was blunt: "Islam has not been hospitable to democracy."The region's inhabitants were presumably to take heart from the scholar'saddendum that the external environment matters: "In large measure, the rise and decline of democracy on a global scale is a function of the rise and decline of the most powerful democratic states." The Free World's victory in the Cold War was thereforea seemingly auspicious augury for the Middle East. Without further belaboring the definitions and the value of these arguments, it is fair to say that the theoretical parametersof democratization still fall between Rustow's hopeful inclusiveness and Huntington's demanding conditionality. Rustow was optimistic, or at least agnostic, about democracy's prospects in countries with some measure of national identity. But Huntington insisted that no matter how liberally defined, the Muslim world lacks the essential preconditions: Among Islamic countries, particularly those in the Middle East, the prospects for democratic development seem low. The Islamic revival...would seem to reduce even further the likelihood of democratic development, particularly since
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try's leading human rights advocate when he declared his candidacy in the country'spresidential race; the incumbent president, who had come to power in a palace coup seven years earlier,preferredto run unopposed and claimed 99 percent of the popular vote. Just this summer, human rights advocates undertook hunger strikes to spotlight the government's complete disregard for free expression. Neither Syria nor Iraq, nor most of the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, have bothered with even the trappings of democracy,while a number of those that did so in the past- Lebanon, Algeria, Yemen, Egypt - have seen their democratic experiments degenerate into increasingly authoritarian Both Rustow and Huntington failed to regimes. predict the wave of liberalizations that overWhy has the Arab world been so resist- and the region- in the late ant to democratic change, when much of the took the world rest of the world seems convulsed by liberal 1980s and early 1990s, although the develwere not inconsistent with their revolutions? Many observersattribute the opments perspectives. The early 1990s saw what region's reluctance to democratize to its culobserverstook to be indi- ture and traditions, particularlyIslam. As many sympathetic cations of potential for democratization in a the historian Elie Kedourie put it, "Democnumber of countries, from Algeria to Egypt, racy is alien to the mind-set of Islam."4Yet the repeated demands for human rights, Jordan, and the Palestine Authority. This on the part of democrats within optimism political liberalization, and democratic govand beyond the region led many to expect ernment in the Arab world in the 1980s and 1990s- demands that actually yielded qualitative change. As it turned out, the far more resilient and inven- contested parliamentaryelections in Morocregimes proved tive in devising ways to refashion their auto- co, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, and Yemencratic hold on power than anyone- except belie uniform hostility to democracy.Clearperhaps the cold-eyed ProfessorHuntingly, substantial numbers of Muslims support ton- thought they would be. adoption of democratic proceduresand Through the 1990s, advocates of democ- institutions. The resistance of most of the governracy faced enormous challenges. In Algeria, for example, after canceling democratic elec- ments in the Middle East and North Africa tions in 1992, the government steadfastly to democratization, however, is striking. "A refused to entertain calls for democratizagreat deal of the explanation"of the poor tion or liberalization, instead waging a war performanceof the region, the Washingtonits Islamist opponents that cost based political analyst Anthony Cordesman against more than 100,000 lives over the following noted several years ago (in a wonderful turn eight years. A fragile civil concord was shat- of phrase), "lies in the fact that many Midtered during early 2001 because of widedle Eastern states have no enemy greater of Berber than their own governments."5A common spread rioting by supporters - a constituency at odds with both Arab and Islamic culture cannot account for rights the Islamists and the government. In 1994, the divergent attitudes of governments and the Tunisian government jailed the countheir citizens. democracy is often identified with the very Western influences the revival strongly opposes. In addition many of the Islamic states are very poor. Those that are rich, on the other hand, are so because of oil, which is controlled by the state and hence enhances the power of the state in general and of the bureaucracy in particular.Saudi Arabia and some of the smaller Arab oil-rich Gulf countries have from time to time made some modest gestures toward the introduction of democratic institutions, but these have not gone far and have often been reversed.3
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by- the characterof their insertion into the world economy. Whereas most countries interact with the world economy in terms of a market for their goods and services in other words, in international trade most of the countries of the Arab world have seen an exceptionally high proportion of their economic interaction with the rest of the world shaped by political criteria. From foreign aid conferredto Cold War allies and cooperEconomic Distortions ative partners in the Arab-Israelconfrontation, to oil prices shaped, if not determined, Clearly,many factors have contributed to the political regimes in the Arab shaping by political negotiations, politically motiworld. These regimes are partly reflections vated international economic transactions of local cultural predispositions, partly rem- have had a profound impact on state revnants of imperial impositions, and partly re- enues for at least a half a century. Not only sults of deliberate choices by domestic and has this disproportionatereliance on exterinternational policymakers. While not deny- nal, politically driven income enhanced the ing the complexity of political causation, I sensitivity of these regimes to the concerns a particularand quite spewould highlight of international patrons and diminished cific characteristicof the region s political their accountability to domestic populations its continuing high about which they know relatively little, it economy, specifically has also led to a political economy based on dependence upon nonmarket economic both domestically and internon-economic bottom lines, or what is transactions, nationally. These countries have moved from known as soft budget constraints. subsistence and local exchange to participaSoft budget constraints are characteristic tion in the so-called world market in a of economies in which nonmarket, political criteria are important standardsof success. historically specific pattern of integration marked by the mediation of that has been The profit motive- the need to end the year in the black- that is the market'smeasure exceptionally strong political imperatives and enterprises. of success is superceded by political requireAt the local level, we know that the ments- the desirability of high employcash economy has not eradicated nonmarket ment, for example, or the demands of naexchange, and that even within cash transac- tional security. Thus governments or international patrons guarantee periodic bailouts tions, a substantial proportion more than half in many places- escape government of state-owned firms or entire countries that surveillance. Most of these countries have are living beyond their means because they enormous informal or black markets, withare fulfilling political purposes. The magniout which the vast numbers of officially un- tude of nonmarket economic transactionsin employed workers would be starving. The given economies varies, and thereforethe have difficulty monitoring, governments significance of soft budget constraints in much less taxing or regulating, their nashaping politics also varies. In the Middle tional economies, and that measure of ignoEast and North Africa, however, there is rance makes the prospect of democratic elec- little doubt that nonmarket transactions tions an especially frightening one to the have been very important not only in the incumbent rulers. domestic economies but also in structuring The nature of the domestic economies is the relationship between the individual not unrelated to- indeed, may be permitted countries and the global market. Because Huntington was wrong, in my estimation, about the importance of culture, but he was not wrong about the importance of the other factors he cited: political economy (although the problem is not simply one of oil revenues)and external environment. In fact, as some have noticed, Huntington is conspicuously silent about what he calls "the external environment."
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the characterof political resourcesis intimately bound up with the nature of economic extraction, assessment of the prospects for liberal or democratic politics throughout the Middle East- and perhaps elsewhere in the developing world as well - requires that we examine the role of political imperatives in shaping putatively economic outcomes internationally as well as domestically. If we acknowledge that foreign aid, debt relief, even oil prices, are not set by market mechanisms so much as they are determined by the political needs and desires of actors outside the region, we must recognize that Huntington's abstract and lifeless "external environment" is actually full of political actors making political calculations. While some of these actors may be serving as models of democracy(though not all- witness the historical role of the Soviet Union and the Arab oil-producing states as foreign aid donors), they are also angling for alliance partners,punishing defectors, jockeying for position in the international system. This is particularly true of the Middle East, where access to oil and the security of Israel have trumped the desire for human rights and democracyon the part of Huntington's "most powerful democratic states" for decades. The availability of soft budget bailouts for compliant regimes has left the region with economies and social structures that are profoundly distorted by conventional capitalist market standards,and profoundly inauspicious for democracy.Indeed, it may be no coincidence that the prospects for democracyseem to increase in direct proportion to the distance of a country from the Arab-Israeliand Persian Gulf arenas.The Columbia sociologist CharlesTilly once observed that a "protectedplace in time and space"had facilitated state building in early modern Europe;the same may hold for democratization now. Where international agendas continue to impose themselves, very few of the
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choices that are ordinarily dictated by hard budget constraints have been faced, much less made, and the domestic economies are a shambles. Between a third and half of the people of the region are under 15 years of age; by 1995, the Middle East had surpassed all other regions of the world in population growth. This means added strains on already overburdenededucational systems and increased demands for job creation. Partly as a result of this population growth, the region has recordeda negative growth rate in GNPper capita since 1985. Nearly everywhere in the Middle East and North Africa the public sector accounts for over half the labor force: government employment is a form of social security. How have governments been able to employ so many people in the face of these negative growth rates? The availability of external revenues the aforementioned foreign aid, oil income, international borrowing has permitted governments to support their subjects and citizens while ignoring, or at least neglecting, domestic production. Even the most reluctant observersrecognized that the era of dramatic state-led growth in the world ended with the collapse of the Berlin Wall or, perhaps more to the point, with the collapse of oil prices several years earlier, but few of the regimes that have come to power in the era of populist and the nationalism- from Algeria's FLN Syrian and Iraqi Ba'th parties to Libya's Qaddafi and even Egypt's Mubarak have been able to make much more than cosmetic accommodations to the new realities. There is, for example, the continued emphasis on rote learning, which ill-prepares school leavers for jobs in the modern economy. For many of these regimes, to be sure, the failure to promote modern education was not entirely inadvertent:a well-educated, knowledgeable, and independent-minded population is demanding and critical, not qualities these regimes were accustomed to fostering. But as a result, the Arab world has among the lowest per capita Internet
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usage rates and the highest unemployment rates in the world. Because of the regimes* inability to fulfill their promises, whether in education or employment, their grip on their societies is slipping. The ill-educated and underemployed young people throughout the region constitute the backbone of the informal economies that sustain the millions of officially unemployed. These economies in turn breed and sustain Islamist oppositions that provide the only excuse these governments need to deny their citizens the right to express their opinions and to associate freely, much less to repressthe exercise of democracy.
Profound Cleavages and New Leadership

Today,although the increasing tension in the Arab-Israeliarena is a sometimes convenient distraction, in my view the most important cleavage in the Middle East and North Africa is not between what we used to call radical and moderate states, or between Arabs and Israelis, or even between secular and religious worldviews, but between those still served by these decaying states and the increasingly large numbers beyond their reach. In fact, tempted as I am by Rustow's hopefulness, I do not think very many countries in the region exhibit even his single precondition, a sense of national identity. This is partly a legacy of imperial designs and the confused and competing nationalisms of the twentieth century, but it also reflects the profound cleavages between the elites and the masses, and the alacrity with which both the regimes and their opponents look beyond their borders for moral and material support. The beneficiariesof the old regime, including the crown princes and presidentdesignates, have lived well under the internationally sponsored, or at least tolerated, autocracyof the last 50 years, and it is they who will have to decide how much genuine change they can live with and how much they can afford to forgo. Is there reasonfor optimism?
Arab Democracy:Dismal Prospects

The old rulers in the region- and some of them are very old- are not good prospects for democracy.Many of them have been pushed in that direction before, to no avail, and they show no sign of a change of heart as they age. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak,Libya'sMuammar Qaddafi, and Iraq'sSaddam Hussein are all following in the footsteps of Syria'slate ruler, Hafez al-Asad, and grooming sons to succeed them, as are the region's monarchs, of course. Among the sons, then, are there more hopeful signs? The recent successions in the monarchies of Bahrain,Jordan, and Morocco, after several decades of remarkablestability, initiated a major transformationin the region's leadership, and there is much that is appealing to Western democrats in these young rulers. The ascension of Basharal-Asad to the helm in Syria illuminates the promise and peril his generation representsfor the Middle East. Like these new kings, Bashar is a young man, in his thirties, fluent in English, and knowledgeable about modern technologies his father fervently resisted. The apparentmodernity belies a skepticism about democracy little different from that of his father. The new leaders' rhetoric is at first blush appealing:Jordan'sKing Abdullah has spoken for example "about the promise of a generation of like-minded and forwardlooking young leaders taking the helm in various Arab countries, better equipped to deal with the challenges of the modern world."6 When Abdullah's Moroccancounterpart, Mohammed VI, came to power in 1999, he said he wanted to promote "a new concept of authority."He talked openly about his admiration for King Juan Carlos of Spain, and his spokesman proclaimed that "the aim is modernity."Yet during his visit to Washington this past summer, he gave a frank assessment of the limits of the change he envisions: "Moroccohas a lot to do in terms of democracy.The daily practice of democracy
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evolves in time. Trying to apply a Western democratic system to a country of the Maghreb, the Middle East or the Gulf would be a mistake. We are not Germany,Sweden or Spain. I have a lot of respect for countries where the practice of democracy is highly developed. I think, however, that each country has to have its own specific features of democracy."7 Although Mohammed did not claim to be speaking for all the governments of the region, it seems unlikely that he would find much dissent among his fellow rulers. Democracy will come very slowly, if at all. Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, Saudi Arabia's ambassadorto the United States is very impressed with the Moroccanking, "I knew his father very well," he said at about the same time, "and I'm impressed by this young king. He definitely hit the ground running, and I think he made very gutsy decisions. He surprised friends and foes. He's my kind of king."8 In fact, all of the rulers of the Muslim Middle East, old and new, prefer to avoid talk of democracy unless questioned by Western reportersor, less often, by Western governments. Crisis-management served the fathers of this new generation well, drawing attention away from their failure to transform their societies while securing the flow of external resourcesthat sustained them in power, and there is a great temptation to perpetuate this arrangement, to modernize it, give it a new name or rationale, but in one way or another, to sustain it. Although the generous external revenues of the past may be decreasing, there are a few straws at which the adroit may grasp to sustain the privileging of a political logic that permits autocracy.We can expect to see regional alliances among King Abdullah's "generationof like-minded and forwardlooking young leaders" all of whom have as much or more in common with each other as they do with the vast majority of their own citizens and subjects- that will be designed to fortify them against the demands
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of their citizens for greater democracyand human rights. Many mechanisms suggest themselves for such an alliance system- a united front against a supposed threat from radical Islam is already serving this purpose in North Africa, for example. Similarly, the governments of the oil producerswill be able to trade continued access to oil and influence in oil-production decisions for support of their regimes. The Arab-Israelirelationship is also useful, in almost all its guises, short of all-out war: conflict permits the regimes to trumpet their loyalties to popular nationalist causes; concord might permit some of the "younger,more forward-looking rulers" to see their interests in retaining power served by cooperation with an Israel willing, indeed insistent upon helping, to guarantee their stability, secured by a West, particularly a United States, more than willing to subsidize an apparentend to the Arab-Israelidispute. If this model of governments playing the client of international patrons and the patron of domestic clients seems implausible, consider the juxtaposition of the arrest of Saad Eddin Ibrahim last year and Washington's expressed hopes that Egypt would play a pivotal role in helping resolve the deadlocked Israeli-Palestiniannegotiations during the summer of 2000. The Egyptian government calculated- correctly that the United States would not jeopardizethe prospects for peace simply to support domestic human rights in Egypt.
The ApproachingDay of Reckoning

As the region's rulers construct alliances designed to ensure their continued hold on power, the disenfranchisedand alienated will also find allies across the region and throughout the world. Indeed, insofar as the elites rely on regional or international allies rather than on domestic constituencies at home, they will face opposition that also transcendsstate boundaries.The reports of international Islamist political networks
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born of common experience and shared frustration with unresponsive and incompetent governments are unlikely to abate. We know that the long-term stability of the Middle East and North Africa and - will of peace agreements and oil exports depend upon the creation and maintenance of genuine ties between governments and their subjects and citizens. It is true that this may not have to be in the form of conventional liberal democracy.England, Japan, and Spain are all monarchies, and we would certainly applaud constitutional development in the region's monarchies. It is certainly no small irony that the monarchies, with their clear proceduresfor succession, seem best equipped to meet the immediate challenges of political succession and stability. They are not constitutional regimes, however, and they face the more fundamental dilemma of creating a twenty-first-century rationale for monarchy as a legitimate type of regime, a problem Iran resolved only through revolution. We also know that the United States, which is on record as supporting democratic government as the best mechanism for guaranteeing accountability, has been a complicating factor in the democratization of the region for decades. As patron of the oil producers and ally of Israel, the United States has routinely honored its commitment to liberal values largely in the breach. Too often, scholars and government analysts alike approachthe question of the U.S. role in the region the same way Huntington did, by relegating it to "the external environment." The United States and its international allies now find themselves supporting autocratic but compliant friends, willing to do the West regional and international favors at the price of the West's blind eye to domestic tyranny.How can the common long-term interests of both international actors and local citizens in the extension of democratic politics be fostered in the short run?

The answer is not simple, for although democracies may be stable and peace loving, democratizing states rarelyare. If this very sketchy analysis is correct, the next generation of leaders in the Arab world will be drawn from one of two groups: those within the state and its ruling circles, and those living at its margins. Neither are great proponents of liberal democracy.The elites appear to be modern but not democratic often a dangerous combination, as the communist experiment showed- and the masses are angry. Were the United States to insist seriously on democratic reform, we would find that the democratizing process would unleash opinions and allow associations- from new nationalisms and new ethnic conflicts to anti-American and antiWestern political ideologies- we would find abhorrent. Yet squelching unpopular or unpleasant ideas and movements only postpones the day of reckoning. The elites and the masses alike are witnessing the state they hoped to put to their purposes increasingly challenged by both internal decay and the negative effects of the globalization of finance and communication that are the watchwords of the new century. Democratization would force wideranging, raucous, and possibly violent debates about the resolution of the ArabIsraeli conflict, the role of the United States in the region, and the pervasive view of inequity in the world, which the current rulers now suppress with America'sperhaps reluctant but very real blessing. Thus far, the United States has evinced no appetite for the inevitably awkward and painful discussion of its past and present role in the region that genuine democratization would entail. It continues to collude with the regimes in power, permitting fixed elections and human rights fakery to provide a fig leaf that allow it and its client regimes to continue in the game. This will serve the interests of neither peace nor de-

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mocracy in the region (nor regional development and prosperity for that matter), and it is not too early to confront the significant role that American policy will play in either facilitating or impeding democratization in the Arab world. Notes
1. Samuel P. Huntington, "Will Countries Become More Democratic?" Political Science Quarterly, vol. 99 (summer 1984). 2. Dankwart A. Rustow, "Transitionsto Democracy: Towards a Dynamic Model," Comparative Politics, vol. 2 (April 1970). 3. Huntington, "Will Countries Become More Democratic?" p. 20.

and 4. Elie Kedourie, Democracy Arab Political Culture(Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1992), p. 1. 5. Anthony Cordesman, "Transitionsin the Middle East," address to the Eighth U.S.-Mideast Policymakers Conference, September 9, 1999 (http://www. csis.org/mideast/reports/transitions/html). 6. Middle East International (London), February 26, 1999. 7. King Mohammed VI of Morocco, in an interview in Time,reprinted in Friends of Morocco, summer 2000. 8. Roxanne, Roberts, "Morocco'sKing of Post,June 21, 2000. Hearts," Washington

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