Tunisian Exceptionalism Or Constitutional Timing: A Comparison Of Democratic Transitions In The Middle East (original) (raw)
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC AND UNIVERSITY RESEARCH PUBLICATION Page 2/8, 2017
Being independent and having the extreme power, the United States confirms the second and third theories, which are related to the political and military factors on one hand, and human rights and the ineffectiveness of aids on the other. These are applicable in the study presented in the intervention of the US in Egypt which was as the bridge to the US to reunite with the Muslim world after the Arab spring, and the involvement of the second theory related to the political and military factors imposed by the US to keep the region for them under the name of democracy taking into consideration the social culture too. The US was also able to get involved in the replacement of the leader in Yemen, keeping the ruling family in Bahrain, enforcing Gaddafi to resign in Libya, and yielding the atrocity of Assad in Syria without having successful results through these policies. The American foreign policy has a fundamental purpose, which is diffusion of democracy all over the world. Since its birth, the United States was a democratic state; the first cultured and political thinkers who founded the Unites States came out with an accurate democratic individualist system and an efficient charter to protect it. In their beliefs, Americans think that democratic system is the normal political system because the nations can choose and change the governments and this system defends the rights of human. According to Boone, the United States seeks to spread its stamps of democracy all over the world either by conviction or by force (Boone,2015). After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, democracy prospered in the world while the Middle East region was still ruled by different dictatorial regimes (Way & Levitsky, 2010). After the attacks of eleven of September, the United States decided to strip the terrorists that support the dictatorial governments in Afghanistan and Iraq through a war and to allow the Arab to elect their governments. KEYWORDS Democracy , Middle East , United States and the Arab Spring
A Dream Deferred: The Democratic Peace After the Arab Spring
For much of the post-Cold War period, the United States and its Western allies adopted foreign policies that were not averse to status quo disruptions in non-democracies, informed by the belief that democracy is the objectively best political system. However, when it appeared that democratic reform might take root following the so-called Arab Spring, U.S. policies seemed to adhere to the prescriptions of Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder, who cautioned that democratization is more likely to cause international war than result in stable democracies, stable autocracies, and other types of political transitions. As the Arab world remains in crisis, the United States is without a regional grand strategy and clear priorities. Seeking to fill this strategic void with sound policy recommendations, this paper utilizes empirical data to construct two bivariate analyses testing variables linked to the onset of war; the first reconstructs Mansfield and Snyder’s study of state-level factors and the second examines systemic factors. This study finds that highly militarized countries are far more likely to be involved in international war than their peers, a problem which is compounded by the existence of strategic rivalries between states. The Arab world has the highest rate of militarization and rivalry of any region, and its future is likely to be one of protracted warfare, not a democratic peace.
Popular discourses of democracy and democratization, disseminated by Western media, framed American perceptions of the uprisings as a consequence of long-repressed demands for greater enfranchisement, free and fair elections, and pluralist democracy. Absent from this narrative was an appropriate comparison and analysis of the disparate US foreign policy stances pertaining to the region, the discursive threads linking some of them, the evolution of Washington’s rhetoric, and the practical implications of these for the countries in which uprisings occurred. Therefore, what is most salient to the current collection of essays is a critical analysis of the dominant American discourse which has presented the uprisings as a simplistic binary between democracy and authoritarianism.
In the last 12 years, the United States has faced momentous changes in the Middle East and North Africa: the 9/11 attacks, the declaration of the Global War on Terror and the war in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the failed transition to democracy in both countries, the challenges to regional allies coming from Iran and its proxies, just to pick some of the most relevant events. American policymakers had just settled for the pursuit of stability after the years of transformational diplomacy and aggressive democracy promotion when a wave of uprisings shook the foundations of the regional order, bringing to the collapse of four dictators (Ben Ali, Mubarak, Qadhafi and Saleh), the outbreak of two civil wars (Libya and Syria) and the destabilization of numerous regional allies such as Bahrain or Jordan. The Obama administration came to power when a new 'pro-stability' consensus had re-emerged within the American foreign policy community, only to face the outbreak of the Arab uprisings just half-way through its first term. These events posed daunting challenges to the US administration and to the foreign policy community at large. 2 The reaction of the Obama administration to these challenges will be discussed here in a wider context: the recent failures in US efforts at democratisation in the region, the longstanding changes in the mainstream of the US foreign policy community and the elements of continuity with the Bush administration. This paper investigates the interaction between the new desire for stability within US foreign policy elites and the quest for change among Arabs, particularly after the outbreak of the Tunisian revolution in December 2010. Much like with storms which are created by the impact of two masses of air with different temperature and pressure, so in the case of US Middle East policy the problem was the contradiction between the quest for stability and normalcy within the US foreign policy elite and the drive towards democracy and change among the people of the Middle East. The description of the evolution of American policy in the region will be the first part of this paper: the first paragraph will discuss the longstanding dilemma between stability and democracy promotion while the second paragraph will try to demonstrate that the Obama administration was influenced by changes within the US foreign policy elite which had occurred in the last stages of the Bush administration. The third paragraph will discuss Obama's policy towards the Arab Awakenings through three case studies: Egypt, Libya and Bahrain. In the first case, the US acquiesced in the removal of a friendly leader in order to preserve a friendly regime; in Libya it removed leader and regime altogether while in Bahrain it decided to stand by both the leader and the regime. As Brownlee (2012: 3) demonstrated for Egypt, Mattia Toaldo, The Obama administration and the transition towards democracy in the Middle East and North Africa 2 | P a g e removal of the old dictator not always implies overthrow of the old regime. 3 This in turn produces completely different outcomes for the US whereas a friendly regime might remain in place, although with different faces and with increased popular accountability, while a hostile regime might be overthrown altogether. The ongoing dramatic changes taking place in the region might therefore paradoxically introduce more stability as sources of destabilization, namely anti-American dictators, are removed while allies remain in place. These three case studies will be used to demonstrate the main thesis of this paper: that the Obama administration has been in continuity not only with traditional US policy in the Middle East but also with the last phase of the Bush administration, pursuing always stability at the cost of local democracy. This paper concludes, also, that pursuit of economic liberalization has always gone hand in hand with US proclaimed efforts at political liberalization and actually often the former has obscured the latter as in Egypt in the late 1970s. The current agenda of the US administration is still heavily based on the idea that democracy and free market overlap. Whether America might eventually settle for local governments which pursue more radically neoliberalism rather than democracy is still a question mark.
The United States and the Arab Spring
Journal of Human Security, 2013
This article reveals, by studying correlative relationships between US regime support and regime properties, that the US foreign policy in the Middle East has traditionally helped governments to limit the political participation of Islamists, communists, enemies of Israel and populations that could be hostile to the US oil interests. This way the US economic and strategic security interests have contributed to human insecurity in the region. With the exception of the last interest, the US has relaxed its support for repression of the abovementioned groups. This seems to be one of the international factors that made the Arab Spring possible.
US Democracy Promotion and Popular Revolutions in the Middle East: Challenges and Opportunities
Research Paper, 2011
The Middle East is experiencing a process of change through popular uprisings partly as a result of worldwide political awakening. Events in the Middle East, since the last few months, have surprised observers as well as policymakers throughout the world. These issues are matters of concern and opportunities for many international actors, including the United States. A popular backlash has started against American supported dictatorships and repressive regimes throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The popular uprisings have significant aspects of dynamic change in the region and are likely to impact the major international players in the Middle East, especially the US and its policy of democracy promotion. It is, typically, a challenge for US foreign policy which has supported dictators to realize its strategic interests in the region. The US has pursued a dual agenda in the Middle East for decades. On the one hand, it has adopted the policy of democracy promotion, even by use of force, in the Arab world and, on the other hand, categorically supported dictators and repressive regimes. Support for internal reforms in Arab countries has become an integral part of US foreign policy in the Middle East. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, American foreign policymakers emphasized the broader benefits likely to result from the removal of Saddam Hussein's authoritarian regime and the cultivation of a democratic regime in its place.1 It was envisioned by US policymakers that the success of democracy would further enhance democratization and greater economic prosperity in the Middle East, a region characterized, historically, by authoritarian regimes which arguably have contributed in reinforcing chronic political instability, conflict and economic problems.
US democracy promotion in the Arab Middle East since 11 September 2001: a critique
International Affairs, 2005
US foreign policy has always contained a powerful idealist element, and promoting democracy abroad has been one of its goals, in one way or another, since the time of Woodrow Wilson. Democracy promotion gained particular salience in the Cold War context under Ronald Reagan. It was then re-emphasized in the euphoria of the post-Cold War period under Bill Clinton. But after 11 September 2001 the US administration focused on promoting democracy in the Middle East especially, and with unprecedented forcefulness. There were both ideological and practical reasons for this. Democracy is a key principle in the neo-conservative world-view which has come to dominate the Bush administrations of 2000 and 2005; and the policy consensus in the Bush administrations has been that fostering democracy in the Middle East would drain the pool from which terrorist organizations draw recruits in their 'global struggle' against the US. It would also contribute to the peaceful resolution of disputes in the region because 'democracies do not go to war with one another'. 1 This article tracks the emergence and implementation of US democracy promotion policies since 2001 and assesses their impact on the Arab 'core' of the Middle East region. 2 It shows that the impact of US democracy promotion policies has been ambiguous and suggests three reasons why this is so. It then uses this analysis to make suggestions for improving US policy. The promotion of democracy in the Arab Middle East by the US since 2001 has been pursued on a number of different levels, none of which can be understood in isolation from the others. The first level consists of policy initiatives comprising clusters of projects to support civil society organizations and reform state institutions with a view to encouraging democratic change. USAID has increased emphasis on democracy promotion since 2001, as a means of reducing * I would like to thank Margot Light, Spyros Economides, Rosemary Hollis, Rashmi Singh and Rawan Maayeh for their help in writing this article. Many thanks also to Caroline Soper and one anonymous reviewer for their comments. 1 The reference here is to the 'democratic peace thesis'. 2 I have excluded Turkey and Iran from this study because they present altogether different problems for US foreign policy from those posed by the Arab world. The 'core Arab area' refers to the countries of the Arab League.