January 27th, 2010 by Josh

Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the director of Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, penned a piece[PDF] for the latest edition of the Journal of Democracy in which he highlights, and attempts to explain, the dearth of democracies throughout the Arab world. Alarmed that the “third wave” of democratization produced a “critical mass” of democracies in every region save one — the Middle East — Diamond considers the possible reasons behind the region’s collective reticence toward meaningful reform.

Though many attribute this “democracy deficit” to the region’s religion or culture, Diamond dismisses this argument by pointing to eight non-Arab, Muslim-majority countries currently rated by Freedom House as electoral democracies. Muslim-majority states outside of the Mid-East also rated considerably higher than their Arab counterparts on two of Freedom House’s most important measurements. Further dispensing with the culture claim, Diamond notes that many African countries with similar traditions of autocratic rule have in recent years embraced modern democratic principles of governance.

With regard to sectarianism, and those who presume that deep social fissures within the Arab world preclude democratic progress, Diamond counters by highlighting war-torn Lebanon and Iraq as the two Middle Eastern countries closest to full electoral democracy. He claims that Arab populations do, in fact, want representative governments, pointing to an Arab Barometer survey that revealed overwhelming support for democracy over authoritarianism. Yet, despite social and even economic similarities between the Arab world and other, more democratized regions, Middle Eastern states have not succumbed to the wave of democratic globalization.

Continue reading below the fold.

Having eliminated many of the most commonly blamed internal characteristics, Diamond settles upon the Arab-Israeli conflict, mutually reinforcing policies across the greater region, and the intrusive influence of geopolitics as the prime culprits behind the longevity of Arab authoritarianism. The region’s abundance of oil, compounded by nature of the modern economy, “distorts the state, the market, the class structure, and the entire incentive structure,” he says. “Not a single one of the 23 countries that derive most of their export earnings from oil and gas is a democracy today.” Because many Arab states generate huge revenue from oil, they often choose not to tax their citizens. “And that is part of the problem,” Diamond claims, “they fail to develop the organic expectations of accountability that emerge when states make citizens pay taxes.” This leads to a weak and co-opted civil society. And of course, western nations prefer stable political environments to ensure a consistent supply of oil, which Diamond sees as perhaps an excuse for Arab states to suppress opposition and “reinforce one another in their authoritarianism and their techniques of monitoring, rigging, and repression.” Diamond also notices a conspicuous absence of democratic principles within the Arab League’s charter, which he views as a significant barometer of the region’s current commitment toward reform.

However, he allows for the possibility that three factors may precipitate democratic change: 1) the emergence of a single democratic polity to serve as a model; 2) principled engagement by the U.S. and its European allies to encourage and press for reforms in every democratic arena; and 3) a prolonged, steep decline in world oil prices which may “bring a decisive end to Arab political exceptionalism.”

Posted in Democracy Promotion, Freedom, Human Rights, Sectarianism |