How is democracy to arrive in the Arab world?
Last week I attended a conference on the status of freedom of expression and the press in the world organized by UNESCO in Paris. One of the speakers was Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Aker, director of the Arab Media Internet Network (www.amin.org).
In his address Abu Aker emphasized that the arrival at the end of the 1990s of the Internet and the Al Jazeera satellite television broadcasting from Qatar constituted nothing less than a revolution for the Arab world. He pointed to the fact that the recent uprisings against autocratic regimes that have evoked hopes for the arrival of democracy in the Arab world are largely due to the new media, which have empowered people to freely communicate and overcome censorship.
The popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have triggered a debate on why autocratic regimes prevail in the Arab world and how are they to be dismantled. The fact is that, aside from Lebanon prior to the civil war that erupted in 1975, a democratic regime has never existed in the16 states with predominantly Arab populations. Why? The best analysis to my knowledge in this context is provided by the prominent American political scientist Larry Diamond in an article published a year ago titled "Why are there no Arab democracies?" (Journal of Democracy, Vol. 21, No. 1, January 2010).
According to Diamond the lack of democratic regimes in the Arab world cannot be explained by the prevailing religion -- that is, Islam -- because there are basically democratic states (like Turkey, Bangladesh, Albania, Senegal and Malaysia) among Muslim-majority countries. Neither can it be explained by the prevailing political culture in the Arab countries because surveys indicate that the support for political freedom and democracy is very broad among Arab peoples and does not vary by degree of religiosity. Poverty fails to provide an explanation since most Arab countries are quite well-to-do in terms of per-capita income, and many countries with similar levels of income have democratic regimes.
It is thus clear that lack of democratic regimes in the Arab world needs to be explained by factors other than those discussed above. One such factor may be that which is referred to as the "oil curse." Eleven out of 16 Arab-majority countries derive the major part (between 70 to 90 percent) of their revenue from oil and gas. (There are no democracies among the 23 countries that have oil and gas as their main source of income.) Unearned income from oil and gas does not only discourage investments and thus hinders overall socio-economic development, it also enables the states involved to provide a minimum standard of living to citizens without taxing them, and thereby avoid demands for representation.
Oil and gas rents also enable the state to develop highly repressive secret police and intelligence apparatuses. Autocratic Arab states are world leaders in terms of the proportion of gross national product (GNP) spent on "security." They do not, however, rely only on repression. In countries like Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and Kuwait, representative mechanisms including manipulated elections are also used to perpetuate the regime.
The major external factor that helps autocratic Arab regimes survive is the foreign aid they receive -- previously from the Soviet Union, and since the end of the Cold War from the United States and its European allies -- in terms of economic resources, security assistance and political legitimacy. Another external factor is the Arab-Israeli conflict, which helps the autocratic states to divert public frustration away from the corrupt and repressive regime. Yet another external factor is the solidarity among autocratic regimes. Such solidarity has turned the 22-member Arab League into what Diamond calls an "unapologetic autocrats' club."
Is the Arab world doomed to live with autocracies? Diamond argues that three things may change the fate of the Arab world: 1) The emergence of a single democratic regime (possibly in Iraq or Egypt) that may be seen as a model for the region. 2) A change in US policy from that of supporting autocracies to that of encouraging democratization. In this context, Diamond points to the necessity for the US and its European allies to engage with Islamist opponents of autocracies willing to commit themselves to liberal democratic norms. 3) The halving of world oil and gas prices with the advent of sustainable energy technologies.
Larry Diamond's analysis, summarized above, does indeed provide a framework for understanding the durability of the autocratic Arab regimes. It also provides clues as to how these regimes are likely to be dismantled. But it neglects an external (turned internal) factor that may prove to be the main dynamic that is to disintegrate the autocracies. And that factor seems to be the one emphasized by the Palestinian journalist Abu Aker referred to above: the consequences of the communications revolution brought about by the web and satellite television.
Last week I attended a conference on the status of freedom of expression and the press in the world organized by UNESCO in Paris. One of the speakers was Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Aker, director of the Arab Media Internet Network (www.amin.org).
In his address Abu Aker emphasized that the arrival at the end of the 1990s of the Internet and the Al Jazeera satellite television broadcasting from Qatar constituted nothing less than a revolution for the Arab world. He pointed to the fact that the recent uprisings against autocratic regimes that have evoked hopes for the arrival of democracy in the Arab world are largely due to the new media, which have empowered people to freely communicate and overcome censorship.
The popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have triggered a debate on why autocratic regimes prevail in the Arab world and how are they to be dismantled. The fact is that, aside from Lebanon prior to the civil war that erupted in 1975, a democratic regime has never existed in the16 states with predominantly Arab populations. Why? The best analysis to my knowledge in this context is provided by the prominent American political scientist Larry Diamond in an article published a year ago titled "Why are there no Arab democracies?" (Journal of Democracy, Vol. 21, No. 1, January 2010).
According to Diamond the lack of democratic regimes in the Arab world cannot be explained by the prevailing religion -- that is, Islam -- because there are basically democratic states (like Turkey, Bangladesh, Albania, Senegal and Malaysia) among Muslim-majority countries. Neither can it be explained by the prevailing political culture in the Arab countries because surveys indicate that the support for political freedom and democracy is very broad among Arab peoples and does not vary by degree of religiosity. Poverty fails to provide an explanation since most Arab countries are quite well-to-do in terms of per-capita income, and many countries with similar levels of income have democratic regimes.
It is thus clear that lack of democratic regimes in the Arab world needs to be explained by factors other than those discussed above. One such factor may be that which is referred to as the "oil curse." Eleven out of 16 Arab-majority countries derive the major part (between 70 to 90 percent) of their revenue from oil and gas. (There are no democracies among the 23 countries that have oil and gas as their main source of income.) Unearned income from oil and gas does not only discourage investments and thus hinders overall socio-economic development, it also enables the states involved to provide a minimum standard of living to citizens without taxing them, and thereby avoid demands for representation.
Oil and gas rents also enable the state to develop highly repressive secret police and intelligence apparatuses. Autocratic Arab states are world leaders in terms of the proportion of gross national product (GNP) spent on "security." They do not, however, rely only on repression. In countries like Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and Kuwait, representative mechanisms including manipulated elections are also used to perpetuate the regime.
The major external factor that helps autocratic Arab regimes survive is the foreign aid they receive -- previously from the Soviet Union, and since the end of the Cold War from the United States and its European allies -- in terms of economic resources, security assistance and political legitimacy. Another external factor is the Arab-Israeli conflict, which helps the autocratic states to divert public frustration away from the corrupt and repressive regime. Yet another external factor is the solidarity among autocratic regimes. Such solidarity has turned the 22-member Arab League into what Diamond calls an "unapologetic autocrats' club."
Is the Arab world doomed to live with autocracies? Diamond argues that three things may change the fate of the Arab world: 1) The emergence of a single democratic regime (possibly in Iraq or Egypt) that may be seen as a model for the region. 2) A change in US policy from that of supporting autocracies to that of encouraging democratization. In this context, Diamond points to the necessity for the US and its European allies to engage with Islamist opponents of autocracies willing to commit themselves to liberal democratic norms. 3) The halving of world oil and gas prices with the advent of sustainable energy technologies.
Larry Diamond's analysis, summarized above, does indeed provide a framework for understanding the durability of the autocratic Arab regimes. It also provides clues as to how these regimes are likely to be dismantled. But it neglects an external (turned internal) factor that may prove to be the main dynamic that is to disintegrate the autocracies. And that factor seems to be the one emphasized by the Palestinian journalist Abu Aker referred to above: the consequences of the communications revolution brought about by the web and satellite television.
