Democracy and Democratization in the Arab World: Unending Struggle (original) (raw)

The Arab World and The Politics of Democracy

The Middle East has become simultaneously the world's most controversial, crisis-ridden, and yet least-understood region. Taking new perspectives on the area that has undergone the most dramatic changes, the Middle East. Following the Arab Spring that struck the Middle East like wire fire starting from Tunisia then Egypt, followed suit by Libya then

Post Arab Spring Thoughts: The ARAB WORLD AND DEMOCRACY

The Arab Spring struck the Middle East to the core as popular uprisings landed in Tunisia then Egypt, Libya followed suit after Yemen, yet the course of events was doomed when the process was held up in Syria, bringing the issue of democracy in the Arab region to the fore. Enthusiasm towards fully-fledged democracy has been mounting and demonstrators calling for freedom, human rights and democracy have never stopped, although the revolts succeeded in toppling a number of autocratic regimes and "fair" elections were held. The parties, who failed in the elections, and their supporters, accuse the winners of cheating, fraud and falsifying the results. This is not an attribute unique to elections in the Arab region as many democratized societies behave the same way in similar circumstances (the latest case was in Bulgaria). Nevertheless, the opposition sparked a new spate of demonstrations aiming to topple, obstruct or thwart the rule of the newly elected elites. On the other hand, the winners were accused of wrongdoings and practices that are deemed to enhance and consolidate their own rule. In an attempt to keep readers abreast, this article will try to explain the term democracy in the Arab world, tackling both historical and practical contours. The first part will review the status of democracy in the Arab region from a historical perspective; while the second part will discuss its viability as pertains to the current state of affairs.

Can the Arab World be Democratic: An Analytic Study from the Perspective of the Arab Spring

Journal of Contemporary Politics

This article deals with the democratisation debate in the Arab world. The region remains one of the least receptive regions in the world towards the popularly and universally accepted Western norm of liberal Democracy. This is at odds with the location and general direction in which these nations and the people of these nations look for inspiration and direction. Today the Arab world stands at a crossroads, seemingly torn between the forces of the new Cold War. The region appears to be a new battlefield for the proxy war between the West and Russia, with Syria and Yemen being the best examples of this phenomenon. This is particularly tragic, given that in the last Cold War that started in 1945 and ended in 1991, this region was the zone of a number hot-engagements that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, displacement of people, huge refugee crises (the Palestine-Israel issue, Yemen Civil War, etc) and general instability in the region. This instability in turn provided the ...

Analysis of the Current Democratic Wave in the Arab World: Lessons and Implications

2012

The Arab world which occupies the vast desert land of the Middle East is one of the most blessed in natural resources and with a peculiar socio-political setting distinct from the West. This oil rich region which has over the years been governed by monarchical rule witnessed an unrest that started at the end of 2010 attracting interest in the western democracies, in the middle and near eastern nations, whose instability will compel changes in western policies for the region. However, this paper, using both political economy and political culture approach, sought to extricate the dichotomy between the Arab world and the west in terms of political ideology. The central argument of this paper is that the current Arab revival is not a trend but rather a long time project designed by western powers and therefore posited that democratization should be a home grown process and the west may not be able to achieve politically in its current bid to democratize or "liberalize" the desert except it incorporates Islamic-political culture in its effort. More importantly, the west needs to carry along the Arabian government and its people for the full actualization of its interest(s) in the Middle East and desist from using 'force' on the people to accept a new form of political administration.

Democracy in the Middle East: Towards a More Peculiar Framework of Analysis

2014

For several decades, an already classical controversy has been developed, regarding the compatibility between democracy, in its forms developed by Western political culture (real partitioning of power within the state and independence of institutions, constitutionalism, respect of human rights and liberties, liberty of expression, existence of an active civil society, normal relations between state and society etc.) and capacity of the state and society from the Arab-Muslim World to functionally assume such a model. In the case of latter, a series of characteristics is linked to authoritarian and patriarchal political transitions, to persistence of an economic, political and religious violence which affects the internal stability of society, the important role of army which interferes or even dominates the civilian political environment, fluidity of the national realities and attachments which are challenged by the persistence of certain ethnic, sectarian or regional solidarities, raising issues on the legitimacy of nation-states, projects of Islamist movements that promote their own models of state and society, constructed from a reinterpretation of Islamic tradition, etc. Based on these assumptions, in this paper I intend to review several specific elements that contribute to the regional conditioning of democratization processes, especially in the context of new political and security dynamics, after the Arab Spring, the possibilities of democratization in the Middle East and North Africa, which have experienced tendencies of authoritarianism and especially an ascending fragmentation of the state order and stability, that has emerged as one of the recurrent analysis themes for specialists and decision makers.

islam, democracy and the arab springs

The Arab revolts of 2011 raised new questions regarding democracy. On the one hand, a new kind of democracy is apparently born: the democracy of the multitude. On the other, Islam has been a major actor in the Arab revolts and presumably will play a growing role in the future. The article investigates if there is a new political model put forward by the foreseeable Islamic developments of the revolts. If we take for granted that there is not only one kind of democracy and that there is much more space for Islamic organizations in the present and future political arena of the Muslim countries, then it will not sound like a heresy to ask whether there is an Islamic way to democracy. In order to demonstrate this original point of view, it is necessary to deal with the principles of Islamic political thought. The Arab revolts promise to renew and update these principles. The article will try to peruse this revision from the point of view of Antonio Gramsci and his theory of hegemony.

DEMOCRATISATION AND THE ARABS: A HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL STUDY

The origins of the modern unrest in the Arab world known as the Arab Spring had its beginnings in Tunisia in protests against the long-running and dictatorial rule of Ben Ali. These protests against the ruling dispensations later spread to neighbouring Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan and many other Arab states. Different factors played a role in the disturbances and civil unrest in various countries such as dictatorial rulers, widespread unemployment, poverty, the influence of the West and self-empowerment. The US by and large remained a silent spectator to these changes, while actively supporting the rebels in Libya that took up arms against the long-running rule of the dictator Qaddafi. The so-called Arab spring also coincided with the economic downturn in the US and many countries in the Western world, and so there was much less appetite among Western nations to actively participate in the revolutions in the Arab world. The Arab Spring also coincided with the slow pull-back and withdrawal of US troops from Iraq as well as Afghanistan, ensuring that the democrat-led US administration of President Barack Obama had little appetite to contemplate activist intervention in any other Arab state. Israel too was obsessed with the so-called ‘Iranian nuclear threat’ and was equally concerned that the Arab Spring unrest should not spread to the Palestinians living within the state of Israel as well as those in the West Bank and Gaza. Wealthy Arab states such as those comprising the GCC were concerned enough to announce a slew of economic and political-legislative sops meant to assuage the political feelings of their individual populations. The Arab spring also had an impact on states where the Arab population were a minority such as Iran and Israel. In the West, there was a debate whether the so-called Arab Spring was also the Arab Winter as Islamist parties took control of power in many countries where the old regime was toppled such as Egypt and Tunisia. It remains to be seen what the long-term impacts of the Arab Spring will be for the region concerned as well as the wider world. Will there be a flowering of democracy across the region and the associated areas such as Iran and parts of sub-Saharan Africa not to mention Central Asia, or will the so-called ‘spring’ of Arab democracy give way to a hot summer of Arab discontent as currently visible in regions like Bahrain and Syria before simmering down into an ‘autumn’ of disillusionment and a bleak ‘winter’ of renewed despair at the hands of regional despots, Kings, Sheikhs and Islamists of many hues and colours. The future of the Arab Spring is open to many predictions and interpretations, but ultimately the future of the region lies in the hands of the people of the region and their wish for responsible and democratic government, Islamist or otherwise.

The Arab Spring: Is democratic transformation in the Arab world possible?

The demonstrations in the Arab countries, which started in early 2011,carried the Middle East and the legitimacy of its regimes into the world agenda once again. Within that context, this study discusses the problems in their socio-economic and political structures of the Arab regimes. In so doing, the study especially emphasizes the Arab states’ authoritarian structures, the bases on which they establish their legitimacy, and how economic and some democratic applications and institutions allowed such structures to persist. After discussing these basic problems of the Arab regimes, the study questions and investigates the capacity of these regimes to resist change, the desire and capacity of people to transform them, and finally the interplay between the Arab political culture and possibility of a change. The main conclusion of this article is that a profound regime change is only possible in conjunction with a change both in socio-economic conditions and in the political culture that feeds them.