The Freeman Spogli Institute's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) has established a new Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World, the result of a generous gift from the Foundation for Research and Development in the Middle East (FDRDME), based in Geneva, Switzerland.  The program, which runs for five years beginning in September 2009, conducts research, organizes conferences and seminars and sponsors visiting scholars at CDDRL.  The program's scholarly research examines the different social and political dynamics within Arab societies and the evolution of political systems, with an eye on the prospects, conditions, and possible pathways for political reform.

The new program brings together scholars and practitioners from Arab countries and their Western counterparts, as well as local actors of diverse backgrounds, to consider how democratization and more responsive and accountable governance might be achieved, as a general challenge and within specific Arab countries.  Among the program's first research projects is one on transitions from absolute monarchy in historical and comparative perspective. To this effect, are there any lessons that can be drawn from past experiences, and across different settings, and to what degrees can they apply to the Arab world?  A conference taking stock of democratic progress and conditions in the Arab world is planned for May 10-11, 2010.

Center Director Larry Diamond thanked the Foundation for its visionary contribution. "This gift puts Stanford on the map in contemporary Arab studies and will make CDDRL one of the most important academic sites for studying these issues.  In the modern history of the Arab world, there has never been a more compelling and opportune moment to examine current conditions of governance and factors that might facilitate or obstruct democratic change.

"In the modern history of the Arab world, there has never been a more compelling and opportune moment to examine current conditions of governance and factors that might facilitate or obstruct democratic change"

"The striking political continuity in the Arab world is not just of analytic interest, but is a challenge to sustained long-term economic development, stability, and peace." Diamond stated. "From the expressions and actions of vibrant and diverse civil societies in the region, and a growing wealth of public opinion-survey evidence, we know that peoples of the region desire political emancipation and self-determination no less than others around the world.  The challenge is to figure out how indigenous democratic change might be negotiated in ways that generate broad societal consensus and do not risk violence or instability."

"From the expressions and actions of vibrant and diverse civil societies in the region, and a growing wealth of public opinion survey evidence, we know that peoples of the region desire political emancipation and self-determination"

The program is supervised by Diamond and CDDRL Deputy Director Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, and managed by Lina Khatib, in interaction with Professor Olivier Roy, in his capacities as a leading Western scholar of political Islam and as director of FDRDME. Roy, a long-time scholar and research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) who has recently been named Professor of Mediterranean Studies at the European University Institute in Florence, will be a frequent participant in program events and a recurrent visitor to CDDRL.  Other program participants include Hicham Ben Abdallah and Hind Arroub from Morocco, Visiting Scholars at CDDRL, and Sean Yom, a political science PhD from Harvard University, who is a postdoctoral fellow at CDDRL in 2009-10.

The Arab and Muslim world is indeed in crisis. This crisis, however, may give us a new opportunity to reclaim our fate from foreign powers, local autocrats, and religious fanatics. To do so, we can benefit from recuperating the best elements from our great tradition of Arab nationalism.

Under the banner of "Arab nationalism," we have had many moments of bravery, unity, and triumph. Arab nationalism ended colonialism and forged connections among emerging states, making an indelible mark on the history. This nationalism was not perfect, but it was crucial in our struggles for self-determination, and provided a unifying vision--a project for a future beyond sectarian or even national interests. It is a vision that we need more than ever today. 

This vision is still alive among the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa. We can see it, for example, in the constant demonstrations of support for the Palestinian cause. It also underlies the appeal of various forms of fundamentalism.  As much as they discomfit the West and secular Arabs, these currents embody precisely that yearning for a unified community. The umma may have replaced the Arab nation, and Islamism may have taken up the banner of resistance from Arab nationalism for many Muslims, but forms of Islamism have always been with us, and nationalist and Islamic currents have always been intertwined

Arab nationalism itself aimed to be a pan-Arab "supra-nationalism." Even while fighting for national independence, it maintained a vision of the transnational community and a respect for the shared Islamic character of peoples and cultures. The secular nationalist Michel Aflaq saw the strong connections between Islam and Arab nationalism, and prophesized that "A day will come when the nationalists will find themselves the only defenders of Islam.

Thus, Arab nationalism always shared a number of themes with Islamist movements:  the search for a unified collective consciousness, the desire for a renaissance of Arab language and culture and, of course, anti-imperialism. Resurgent political Islamism, in turn, has absorbed many positions and lessons from its secular nationalist cousin.  

It has become commonplace to remark how Islamism has taken up the banner of resistance to Western domination, and of cultural and even national independence.  For decades, however, it was the West and "moderate" Arab governments which sought to exploit the conservative Islamist currents against the radical nationalists. Our "dirty little secret" - Islamists and secular nationalists included - is that no one has been immune to the opportunistic lure of complicity with foreign powers bent on regional hegemony for their own purposes. We must get past this deadly mutual instrumentalism. It has corrupted great nationalist movements and turned Islam into a doctrine of division and - at the extremes -- armed fanaticism. 

The attempt to set the Arab world against Iran is the latest instance of this futile strategy.  A generalized Sunni-Shiite conflict would destroy pan-Islamism as surely as national selfishness destroyed pan-Arabism. Regimes and populations have resisted this strategy. Arabs states have insisted that concerns about Iran be addressed in the context of the region as a whole.  During the latest Gaza crisis, populations throughout the Arab world kept in check the opportunistic tendencies of certain regimes, and expressed trans-confessional solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. At moments like these, we see that the spirit of pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Islamic solidarity lives.

A revival of this spirit will not come from governments, but from the region-wide popular movements that form in the abyss between regimes and people. A revival of this spirit will not come from governments, but from the region-wide popular movements that form in the abyss between regimes and people. There, we see the yearning for a new form of "nationalism without a nation" that can provide justice, unity and true independence throughout the Arab world. Islamic movements are not the true fulfillment of the nationalist promise, but they have infused it with a renewed spirit of resistance and collective energy. If the self-perpetuating authoritarian regimes, built by nationalist parties, helped to bury Arab nationalism, the new resistance movements, often led by Islamists, are helping to revive it.

A new form of pan-nationalism is arising - generally secular, while still assertive of Arab and Islamic identity, and proud of being involved with the other cultures and languages of the world. This form of consciousness is embedded in new means of international communication, in new networks that have been created among the diaspora and indigenous communities, and in new, creative and profane uses of culture and language that have developed. It detests authoritarianism and corruption, and yearns for democracy and the rule of law, while firmly rejecting foreign military intervention and refusing Western condescension. Where traditional nationalism and Islamism want to be restrictive and controlling, it wants to be capacious and daring, opening our imaginations to new cultural and social possibilities.

This incipient form of transantionalist, pan-Arab consciousness still lacks political effectiveness. It gets squeezed between politically adept forces that speak for state authority or preach sharia. Societies remain divided between an ossified "patriotic" nationalism (wataniya) and a powerful but politically amorphous yearning for transnational solidarity (qawniya). The result is a kind of three-way divorce à l'italienne, with the three parties - the state and its clients, secular and progressive constituencies, and Islamic currents - living uncomfortably separate lives under the same national roof. 

The present economic crisis may provide new opportunities for those with a secular and democratic perspective to shape the debate. In the face of worsening social conditions, Islamists do not have a particularly attractive economic agenda. Their substitute, sharia, has some popular appeal as a means of reducing crime and corruption, but their notion of social justice is caritative, not political; it seeks to alleviate the plight of the poor through alms, rather than to reduce poverty through structural change. 

Thus, it was independent activists who mobilized thousands of Egyptians against the reversal of popular Nasserite land reforms, and organized strikes and demonstrations in the Nile delta during the spring of 2008, while Islamists either hesitated or fully adopted the defense of state policies. Islamists are generally uncomfortable with these kinds of movements, which engender a discourse of popular empowerment that slips beyond their control. As these movements spread, they will offer progressive forces new opportunities to shape the agenda with a discourse of justice based on social rights.

We must be wary of false optimism, however. These mobilizations remain rare, and regimes use every tool to prevent such social movements from coalescing with each other or, especially, with Islamist movements. Regimes have become adept at co-opting discourses of cultural or national identity, defending putatively Islamic values against demands for social and human rights, characterized as Western intrusions. This helps to reproduce the division between Islamists and progressives, pushing the latter into a culturalist "identity trap."

Of course, we cannot ignore the fundamental disparity between progressive and Islamist perspectives. On a theoretical level, these two notions are irreconcilable. Still, there will be significant opportunities for alliances that can be tactically advantageous to both currents and substantively important to the people of our region. And the principles that will enable effective, unified action will be the same principles that motivated our historic nationalist movements: a passion for national and regional independence, a commitment to regional cooperation, an insistence on equal and consistent treatment in international affairs. Across ethnic and confessional groups, the people of the region share a vision of a polity that provides political freedom and the rule of law for all citizens, while improving the economic and social lives of our populations. Whether they call themselves secular or Islamist, the most successful movements in our region will be the ones which can most credibly claim to advance these principles.

We do not wish to underestimate the difficulties we face. Neither nationalism nor Islamism is necessarily about democracy. It is understandable, given the arrogant and hypocritical foreign discourses in which they are embedded, that many of our people view the concepts of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law with suspicion. The interventions of the West create a lot of trouble, but also introduce new strategies and ideas - ideas that we can use to create new openings for ourselves. We can see how, in places like Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine, the promotion of "democracy" has, however unintentionally, opened new possibilities that have been exploited by local forces to strengthen their credibility and independence.

We must use all opportunities to reawaken the progressive spirit of nationalism, to transform the best of our past into something real and new, creating spaces of unity, democracy and pluralism. We must use all opportunities to reawaken the progressive spirit of nationalism, to transform the best of our past into something real and new, creating spaces of unity, democracy, and pluralism. In doing that, we cannot afford to ignore any of the lessons of our history, or of the rest of the world. We must insist on incorporating the new and powerful lessons of the last 60 years. To paraphrase Michel Aflaq again, democracy, political and intellectual freedom, a respect for human rights, and the rule of law are, we find, the only effective defenders of nationalism and Islam. The day has come.

President Bush's vision of a democratic Middle East was premised in part on the region's popular Islamist groups reconciling themselves to the give-and-take nature of democracy.

It might make sense then, that the Bush administration would do what it could to support a party that has made such a transformation in Turkey. But it's not.

Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP), which fashioned itself as the Muslim equivalent of Europe's Christian Democrats, has stood out by passing a series of unprecedented political reforms as the country's ruling party.

Yet the Turkish Constitutional Court - bastion of the hard-line secularist old guard - is now threatening to close down the AKP and ban its leading figures, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, from party politics for five years. And the Bush administration, in the face of this impending judicial coup, has chosen to remain indifferent. The consequences could reach beyond a setback to democracy in Turkey and affect the Middle East.

The Constitutional Court will rule as soon as next week on an indictment accusing the AKP of being a "focal point of antisecular activities."

Turkey's Constitution establishes secularism as an unalterable principle and allows the court to ban parties it deems antisecular. But disbanding a democratically-elected party on such dubious grounds as attempting to lift a controversial ban on wearing head scarves in universities - the crux of the case against the AKP - is not how mature democracies handle divisive issues. Judges should not decide parties' fates; voters should.

Indeed, voters have flocked to the AKP since its founding by break away reformists within the Islamic movement. The party was elected in 2002 on pledges to preserve secularism and vigorously pursue Turkey's efforts to join the European Union. It also explicitly disavowed the Islamist label.

The AKP-led government then passed a series of democratic reforms that led Brussels to begin formal accession negotiations with Turkey. Those reforms, together with a booming economy, spurred 47 percent of Turks to vote for the AKP in its landslide 2007 reelection.

To be sure, the AKP's democratic credentials are hardly perfect. It has been overly cautious in repealing certain restrictions on freedom of speech, and it abruptly lifted the head scarf ban without first initiating a national dialogue.

Yet despite its flaws, the AKP is the most democratically inclined - and somewhat ironically, the most pro-Western - political party on the Turkish scene today. Closing it down would be a mistake.

A ban on a party that nearly half of the country supports could spark violence - which Turkey's secularist generals might then use as a pretext for a direct military intervention. Regardless, senior EU figures have criticized the closure case and warned that banning the AKP could gravely damage Turkey's candidacy.

Even more troubling is the message it would send to the rest of the Muslim world - no matter how much Islamists moderate, they won't be accepted as legitimate participants in the democratic process.

In recent years, mainstream Islamist groups throughout the region - including in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco - have embraced many of the foundational components of democratic life. Yet their moderation has been met with harsh government repression, or more subtle designs to restrict their political participation.

More is at stake than may initially appear. If the AKP - the most moderate, pro-democratic "Islamist" party in the region today - is disbanded, it will strengthen those Islamists who see violence and confrontation as a surer means to influence political power.

During the past year, a number of Islamist leaders we've spoken to in Egypt and Jordan have warned that rank-and-file activists are losing faith in the democratic process, and may soon become attracted to more radical approaches. A ban on the AKP would only make it that much harder for moderates to continue making the case that participating in elections is worthwhile.

Though US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praises the AKP's democratization agenda, last month she said, "Obviously, we are not going to get involved in ... the current controversy in Turkey about the court case." Yet moments later she opined, "Sometimes when I'm asked what might democracy look like in the Middle East, I think it might look like Turkey." It's difficult to tell if she's referring to the new, democratizing Turkey of the past five years - or the reactionary Turkey where judges and generals flagrantly overrule the people's will.

President Bush has one last opportunity to reinvigorate the cause of Middle East democracy. By publicly denouncing the closure case, the administration would signal that the US not only supports Turkish democracy against a dangerous internal assault, but that it is also committed to defending all actors willing to abide by democratic principles in a region that desperately needs more of them.

In a 1999 article profiling six of “China’s bright young stars,” the New York Times described Junning Liu as “one of China’s most influential liberal political thinkers.” Today, sitting in a delegate-style conference room, Liu wants to add a point to Thomas C. Heller’s discussion of risk assessment and the role of law in doing business. If assets are not protected by legal institutions, Heller argues, foreign direct investment becomes a riskier prospect and economic growth suffers as a result. Except, he points out, in China. The legal system doesn’t manage risk but China is growing extremely fast.

“There are more businesspeople in Chinese prisons than dissidents,” Liu says evenly, with a suggestion of a smile. “So you see … Chinese people mind the situation more than you [the foreign investors] do.”

Liu is one of 26 change-makers from developing democracies who were selected from more than 800 applicants to take part in this year’s Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program, which is offered by FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). His colleagues in the program are presidential advisors and attorneys general, journalists and civic activists, academics and members of the international development community. They traveled to Stanford from 21 countries in transition, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia, Egypt, and Nigeria. And like their academic curriculum during the three-week program, which examines linkages among democracy, economic development, and the rule of law, their professional experiences and fields of study center on these three areas, assuring that each fellow brings a seasoned perspective to the program’s discussions.

“For most of the fellows … democracy is seen not as a luxury or an option, but rather as a necessity for achieving broad-based development and a genuine rule of law.”The curriculum for the first week focused on democracy, with leading comparative democracy scholars Michael A. McFaul, Larry Diamond, and Kathryn Stoner team-teaching the morning seminars. Using selected articles and book chapters as starting points for discussion, McFaul, Diamond, and Stoner-Weiss began the weeklong democracy module with an examination of what democracy is and what definition or definitions might apply to distinguish electoral democracy, liberal democracy, and competitive authoritarianism. Another question discussed was whether there was such a thing as Islamic democracy, Asian democracy, Russian democracy, or American democracy.

As the week progressed, fellows and faculty discussed institutions of democracy, electoral systems, horizontal accountability, development of civil society, democratic transitions, and global trends in democracy promotion. Fellows led sessions themselves in the afternoons, comparing experiences and sharing insights into how well political parties and parliaments constrained executive power and how civil society organizations contributed to democratic consolidation and/or democratic transitions.

In addition to discussing their personal experiences with democracy promotion, fellows met with a broad range of practitioners, including USAID deputy director Maria Rendon, IREX president Mark Pomar, MoveOn.org founder Joan Blades, Freedom House chairman and International Center on Nonviolent Conflict founding chair Peter Ackerman, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict president Jack DuVall, Otpor cofounder Ivan Marovic, A Force More Powerful documentary filmmaker Steve York, and Advocacy Institute cofounder David Cohen. Guest speakers talked about their fieldwork, offered practical advice, and answered fellows’ questions. This component grounded the classroom discussions in a practical context. “It was important for our visiting fellows to interact with American practitioners, both to learn about innovative techniques for improving democracy practices but also to hear about frustrations and failures that Americans also face in working to make democracy and democracy promotion work more effectively,” explains McFaul. “We Americans do not have all the answers and have much to learn from interaction with those in the trenches working to improve governance in their countries.”

The following two weeks would focus in turn on development and the rule of law, but democracy continued to serve as the intellectual lynchpin of the program, with economies and legal institutions analyzed vis-à-vis their relationship to the development of democratic systems.

“For most of the fellows, who come from national circumstances which once suffered (or still do suffer) prolonged authoritarian rule, democracy is seen not as a luxury or an option, but rather as a necessity for achieving broad-based development and a genuine rule of law,” says Diamond. “Unless people have the ability to turn bad rulers out of office, and to hold rulers accountable in between elections through a free press and civil society, countries stand a poor prospect of controlling corruption, protecting human rights, correcting policy mistakes, and ensuring that government is responsive to the needs and aspirations of the people.”

Among the fellows, this idea of democracy as a “necessity,” a fundamental platform from which to pursue economic and legal reforms, was widely recognized. “It appears that like-minded people were selected to participate,” notes Sani Aliyu, a broadcast journalist and interfaith mediator from Nigeria. “Each of us is interested in the development of humanity, and it appears that we have accepted that democracy seems to be the vehicle through which human development can be accessed reasonably. We share this."

As the program’s curriculum shifted to development issues for week two, the all-volunteer assemblage of Stanford faculty expanded to include professors and professional research staff from Stanford Law School, the Graduate School of Business, and the Department of Economics. Avner Greif established the context for the development module with an overview of institutional foundations of politics and markets, followed by discussions of growth restructuring in transitional economies with GSB professor Peter B. Henry and Stanford Center for International Development deputy director Nicholas Hope. Terry L. Karl analyzed corruption in developing economies and the “resource curse,” and Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, joined Diamond, McFaul, and Karl in discussing how the spectrum of democratic to autocratic systems of government affected a country’s development.

Another salient component of the development module centered on the role of media in promoting democracy and development. The field trip to San Francisco, which included a session with KQED Forum host Michael Krasny, a briefing on international reporting at the San Francisco Chronicle, and a discussion of media strategies at the Family Violence Prevention Fund, provided particularly rich practical content, as did the fellows’ roundtable on maintaining media independence in semi-autocracies.

At KQED Radio, Cuban-born Raul Ramirez, the executive producer of Forum, talked with fellows about the concept of “civic journalism” and KQED’s goal of creating space for civic discussion. Forum host Michael Krasny and Ramirez, who runs workshops on civic journalism at the European Journalism Centre in Maastricht, then fielded a barrage of questions from fellows: How does KQED maintain independence from government and commercial funding? If Rush Limbaugh attacked you, would you respond in your program? Is it possible to have neutral, nonpartisan public radio? How do you manage to deal with political issues, particularly when you start to affect the power structures with your programming? Are there any words, like “terrorist,” that you are banned from using on the air?

“Discussion of this kind is of great importance to both media professionals and the audience,” notes Anna Sevortian, a journalist and research coordinator at the Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights in Moscow. “It helps you to clarify how a particular newspaper, TV, or radio station is dealing with matters of public policy or of political controversy.”

The third week’s curriculum layered rule-of-law issues onto the conceptual modules of democracy promotion and economic development, drawing on the teaching caliber of constitutional scholar and Stanford president emeritus Gerhard Casper, Erik Jensen, Helen Stacy, Allen S. Weiner, Tom Heller, and Richard Burt. After establishing a theoretical framework through discussions of the role of law, constitutionalism, human rights, transitional justice, the role of law in business and economic development, and strategies for promoting the rule of law, fellows compared experiences defending human rights, met with American immigration and civil liberties lawyers, and had a session with Circuit Court Judge Pamela Rymer on judging in federal courts. Field trips to Silicon Valley-based Google and eBay again put into practical context the free market, rule-of-law components discussed theoretically in the classroom.

Despite the intellectual rigor of the coursework and discussion, and the exploration of practical applicability with guest speakers and field trips, the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program was designed as much to stimulate connections among field practitioners and to provide a forum in which to exchange ideas. Weekend dinners, stretching late into the evening at the homes of Diamond and Stoner-Weiss, helped to gel the collegiality developing in the classroom. Led by Violet Gonda, a Zimbabwean journalist living in exile in London, and Talan Aouny, director of a major Iraqi civil society development program, the fellows organized a multicultural party, a potluck-style affair in which guests made a dish from their home country to share with their colleagues and friends of the program.

Program directors McFaul and Stoner-Weiss hope this social network will endure well into the weeks and months after the program. “We envision the creation of an international network of emerging political and civic leaders in countries in transition who can share experiences and solutions to the very similar problems they and their countries face,” says Stoner-Weiss. To ensure they fulfill their goal of building a small but robust global network of civic activist and policymakers in developing countries, CDDRL recently launched its Summer Fellows Program Alumni Newsletter. The newsletter is based on an interactive website that will allow the center to strengthen its network of leaders and civic activists and facilitate more groundbreaking policy analysis across academic fields and geographic regions, the results of which will be promptly fed back to its activist alumni in a virtual loop of scholarship and policymaking.

Earlier this year, CDDRL also moved to professionalize the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program by hiring a program manager, Laura Cosovanu, an attorney with experience in foundations and other nonprofit organizations, to oversee its advancement. The logistical acrobatics Cosovanu performed throughout the three weeks quickly became the object of good-natured teasing for some of the fellows, all of whom seemed to realize and appreciate the work required to get fellows and faculty into the same room.

As Kenza Aqertit, a National Democratic Institute for International Affairs field representative from Morocco, told program faculty at the graduation dinner, “You’ve done a great job and you should be proud of all your efforts. Plus you’ve won so many friends in so many autocracies and semi-autocracies.