Democracy in Arab World
Yes, we still support Arab autocracy
by Bradley Glasser [Asia Times Online: Jan 15, 2005]
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GA15Ak04.html
Since September 11, 2001, Western governments have articulated a breathtaking vision of democratic reform in the Arab world. Government officials, with the support of myriad policy wonks and pundits, have embraced the idea of Western support for a democratic transformation of the Middle East. Western officialdom has argued that a democratic boom in the region would alleviate the discontent that fuels terrorism and fanaticism in the Arab and Islamic worlds.
This post-September 11 interest in democracy-promotion in the Middle East is supposed to mark a reversal of decades-old Western support for Middle Eastern dictatorships. The Bush administration has touted this apparent transformation in US policy toward the region in countless policy addresses and campaign speeches in 2003 and 2004. (Indeed, in a November 2003 speech, President George W Bush apologized for American support for Middle Eastern dictatorships over the last 50 years.) And the official rhetoric has seemingly been matched by a concerted policy effort among Western powers.
At the June 2004 Group of Eight Summit at Sea Island, Georgia, the US and European governments presented a Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative, which outlined a common US-European framework for democracy-promotion in the Middle East. The initiative created a global forum for the discussion of Middle Eastern political reform, and created a fund for democracy-promotion activities throughout the Arab world.
Most Arab rulers have rejected the imperialist overtones of Western democracy-promotion in the region, and indeed the Arab media have by and large denounced Western efforts to reshape Arab political systems. At the same time, the Western initiative has sparked some debate on political reform in Arab societies, and has pushed Arab governments to acknowledge the need to open up their polities. A few states like Jordan and Morocco have even indicated their willingness to work with Western donors on democracy-promotion.
Sadly, the grandiose Western proclamations and the impassioned Arab debate simply obscure a stifling global consensus that will militate against genuine Arab democratization for the foreseeable future. Overwhelmingly, rhetoric aside, Western governments - including the Bush administration - seem to agree with Arab rulers on a critical point: in general, the authoritarian stability of the existing Arab order should be maintained; at best, Arab and Western governments are considering exceedingly cosmetic political reforms that alleviate domestic discontent and present a positive face to the international community.
Here the confusion - whereby the American media and public assume the US government is pushing for genuine democracy from Morocco to Egypt to the Arab Gulf - stems from the critical distinction between political liberalization and democratization. For more than a decade, the US and the European Union have invested comparatively trivial sums in political liberalization programs in Arab countries. Such aid programs have sought to support civil-society groups seeking greater political participation, or have had a technical orientation that sought, for example, to upgrade the infrastructure of the justice and parliamentary systems in countries like Egypt and Jordan.
What the democracy aid projects of the 1990s did not do was pressure the various rulers to share power in any meaningful way: to allow free and fair parliamentary elections, or to ease the overwhelming institutional power of the ruling parties (in the Arab republics) or of the ruling families (in the Arab monarchies), or to roll back the brutal dictatorial powers of the Arab state. The trivial scope of the democracy aid has reflected the traditional American and European interest in preserving geopolitical stability in the Middle East. For decades, of course, Western governments have preferred to ally themselves with friendly Arab dictators who would guarantee the flow of Middle Eastern oil and keep anti-Western radicals at bay. In designing the democracy aid projects in the 1990s, American and European policy-makers assumed that marginal reforms - enacted at a glacial pace - might enable Arab regimes to ease popular discontent and in turn work to prevent anti-Western revolutions (as occurred in Iran, for example).
The post-September 11 Western approach to Arab reform is essentially the same one employed so ineffectually in the 1990s, notwithstanding the deafening and misleading rhetoric. Indeed, Western-sponsored reforms have perversely worked to enhance the legitimacy of the Arab rulers: enabling them to project a "democratic" facade to their domestic critics and to the international community. In Egypt and Jordan in the 1990s, for example, while aid flowed, human-rights conditions actually deteriorated and the rulers further marginalized their political opponents.
At first glance, some current American and European reform initiatives seem worthwhile. In recent months, for example, the US State Department has highlighted a new Middle East Partnership (MEPI), which will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on Arab reform, broadly defined. In Bahrain last September, MEPI sponsored a judicial reform conference for 200 representatives of Arab justice ministries. Conference participants discussed various aspects of Western judicial practice, including judicial ethics, the recruitment of judges and court administration. The premise of the State Department is that such promotion of Westernized notions of "the rule of law" will contribute to the eventual democratization and Westernization of Middle Eastern polities. That may - or may not - be the case in the long run, as Arab officials absorb Western political and legal values in the coming decades.
But in the short and medium term, the current Western aid projects do nothing more than burnish and enhance the repressive status quo. Since Arab rulers thoroughly dominate their judiciaries and parliaments, the upgrading of judicial and parliamentary procedures mean little or nothing - at least in terms of genuine democratization. Indeed, the aid projects enable rulers to claim that they are democratizing and modernizing, while political conditions in fact continue to deteriorate in major Arab states.
In the end, Western governments may well have little or no power to promote substantial reforms in Arab countries. But given the failures of the gradualist aid approach in the past decade or so, only a more aggressive policy - that of political conditionality - has any hope of contributing to real democratization in the region. In other words, the provision of foreign aid and the expansion of trade ties should be conditioned on genuine political liberalization and democratization. Such progress would include meeting well-defined benchmarks in terms of respecting human rights and press freedoms, allowing free and fair parliamentary elections, and the implementation of constitutional curbs on executive power.
Arab rulers may well refuse to participate in such an intrusive program. But even that eventuality would be preferable to the current "democracy" activities, which simply seem to perpetuate a dangerous and dysfunctional status quo.
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Bradley Glasser is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, and author of Economic Development and Political Reform: The Impact of External Capital on the Middle East (Edward Elgar, 2001).
[Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.]
by Bradley Glasser [Asia Times Online: Jan 15, 2005]
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GA15Ak04.html
Since September 11, 2001, Western governments have articulated a breathtaking vision of democratic reform in the Arab world. Government officials, with the support of myriad policy wonks and pundits, have embraced the idea of Western support for a democratic transformation of the Middle East. Western officialdom has argued that a democratic boom in the region would alleviate the discontent that fuels terrorism and fanaticism in the Arab and Islamic worlds.
This post-September 11 interest in democracy-promotion in the Middle East is supposed to mark a reversal of decades-old Western support for Middle Eastern dictatorships. The Bush administration has touted this apparent transformation in US policy toward the region in countless policy addresses and campaign speeches in 2003 and 2004. (Indeed, in a November 2003 speech, President George W Bush apologized for American support for Middle Eastern dictatorships over the last 50 years.) And the official rhetoric has seemingly been matched by a concerted policy effort among Western powers.
At the June 2004 Group of Eight Summit at Sea Island, Georgia, the US and European governments presented a Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative, which outlined a common US-European framework for democracy-promotion in the Middle East. The initiative created a global forum for the discussion of Middle Eastern political reform, and created a fund for democracy-promotion activities throughout the Arab world.
Most Arab rulers have rejected the imperialist overtones of Western democracy-promotion in the region, and indeed the Arab media have by and large denounced Western efforts to reshape Arab political systems. At the same time, the Western initiative has sparked some debate on political reform in Arab societies, and has pushed Arab governments to acknowledge the need to open up their polities. A few states like Jordan and Morocco have even indicated their willingness to work with Western donors on democracy-promotion.
Sadly, the grandiose Western proclamations and the impassioned Arab debate simply obscure a stifling global consensus that will militate against genuine Arab democratization for the foreseeable future. Overwhelmingly, rhetoric aside, Western governments - including the Bush administration - seem to agree with Arab rulers on a critical point: in general, the authoritarian stability of the existing Arab order should be maintained; at best, Arab and Western governments are considering exceedingly cosmetic political reforms that alleviate domestic discontent and present a positive face to the international community.
Here the confusion - whereby the American media and public assume the US government is pushing for genuine democracy from Morocco to Egypt to the Arab Gulf - stems from the critical distinction between political liberalization and democratization. For more than a decade, the US and the European Union have invested comparatively trivial sums in political liberalization programs in Arab countries. Such aid programs have sought to support civil-society groups seeking greater political participation, or have had a technical orientation that sought, for example, to upgrade the infrastructure of the justice and parliamentary systems in countries like Egypt and Jordan.
What the democracy aid projects of the 1990s did not do was pressure the various rulers to share power in any meaningful way: to allow free and fair parliamentary elections, or to ease the overwhelming institutional power of the ruling parties (in the Arab republics) or of the ruling families (in the Arab monarchies), or to roll back the brutal dictatorial powers of the Arab state. The trivial scope of the democracy aid has reflected the traditional American and European interest in preserving geopolitical stability in the Middle East. For decades, of course, Western governments have preferred to ally themselves with friendly Arab dictators who would guarantee the flow of Middle Eastern oil and keep anti-Western radicals at bay. In designing the democracy aid projects in the 1990s, American and European policy-makers assumed that marginal reforms - enacted at a glacial pace - might enable Arab regimes to ease popular discontent and in turn work to prevent anti-Western revolutions (as occurred in Iran, for example).
The post-September 11 Western approach to Arab reform is essentially the same one employed so ineffectually in the 1990s, notwithstanding the deafening and misleading rhetoric. Indeed, Western-sponsored reforms have perversely worked to enhance the legitimacy of the Arab rulers: enabling them to project a "democratic" facade to their domestic critics and to the international community. In Egypt and Jordan in the 1990s, for example, while aid flowed, human-rights conditions actually deteriorated and the rulers further marginalized their political opponents.
At first glance, some current American and European reform initiatives seem worthwhile. In recent months, for example, the US State Department has highlighted a new Middle East Partnership (MEPI), which will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on Arab reform, broadly defined. In Bahrain last September, MEPI sponsored a judicial reform conference for 200 representatives of Arab justice ministries. Conference participants discussed various aspects of Western judicial practice, including judicial ethics, the recruitment of judges and court administration. The premise of the State Department is that such promotion of Westernized notions of "the rule of law" will contribute to the eventual democratization and Westernization of Middle Eastern polities. That may - or may not - be the case in the long run, as Arab officials absorb Western political and legal values in the coming decades.
But in the short and medium term, the current Western aid projects do nothing more than burnish and enhance the repressive status quo. Since Arab rulers thoroughly dominate their judiciaries and parliaments, the upgrading of judicial and parliamentary procedures mean little or nothing - at least in terms of genuine democratization. Indeed, the aid projects enable rulers to claim that they are democratizing and modernizing, while political conditions in fact continue to deteriorate in major Arab states.
In the end, Western governments may well have little or no power to promote substantial reforms in Arab countries. But given the failures of the gradualist aid approach in the past decade or so, only a more aggressive policy - that of political conditionality - has any hope of contributing to real democratization in the region. In other words, the provision of foreign aid and the expansion of trade ties should be conditioned on genuine political liberalization and democratization. Such progress would include meeting well-defined benchmarks in terms of respecting human rights and press freedoms, allowing free and fair parliamentary elections, and the implementation of constitutional curbs on executive power.
Arab rulers may well refuse to participate in such an intrusive program. But even that eventuality would be preferable to the current "democracy" activities, which simply seem to perpetuate a dangerous and dysfunctional status quo.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Bradley Glasser is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, and author of Economic Development and Political Reform: The Impact of External Capital on the Middle East (Edward Elgar, 2001).
[Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.]
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