Stanford University

Political Reform in the Arab World: Problems and Prospects

On May 10-11, 2010 the Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World at CDDRL held its international inaugural conference. In line with the Arab Reform Program's vision, the conference featured internationally renowned scholars, activists, and practitioners from the Arab world, Europe and the United States. Over the two days, conference participants engaged in multidisciplinary debates addressing hard politics as well as soft politics, and analyzing political reform from different angles, with panels on the economy, state systems, the media, civil society, political opposition, youth politics, and the role of international actors. Problems facing political reform in the Arab world today were discussed and scrutinized, as were possible paths forward. The conference debates unearthed the need for a deep understanding of the problems facing political reform in the region that is driven by an analysis of long-term and often ignored issues that are at the core of political developments. The debates also highlighted that problems and prospects for reform are different in each Arab country because each country has its own unique set of issues and because within each country different ethnic groups, classes, and locales have different takes on and stakes in political developments. The conference closed with a speech by Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim.

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Inaugural seminar: Exploring the missing link between liberalization and democratization in the Middle East

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On February 17, 2010 the Program on Good Governance and Political Reform in the Arab World at CDDRL held its inaugural seminar with Prof. Philippe C. Schmitter, Professor Emeritus, European University Institute, Florence and Visiting Scholar at CDDRL and Dr. Sean Yom, Hewlett Postdoctoral Fellow at CDDRL.

The seminar was titled Exploring the missing link between liberalization and democratization in the Middle East. The seminar aimed to start a public discussion on one of the routine assumptions of students of democratization, which is that there is a close, causal relationship between liberalization and democratization. The former is said to drive those who concede it toward convoking credible elections and, eventually, tolerating ruler accountability to citizens. The link between those processes of regime transformation is alleged to be the mobilization of civil society. It has been argued that the weakness or absence of this linkage is one (among many) of the conditions which make the polities of the Middle East and North Africa resistant to democratization.

In his response to this argument, Philippe Schmitter began by saying that in the work that he started on Southern Europe and Latin America, there was a distinction between democratization and liberalization. Once an autocratic regime enters a process of liberalization, it faces unexpected consequences. Thus, the most vulnerable time for a regime is when it starts to reform itself. Some of the consequences of this process are the resurrection of civil society, more freedom of expression and movement, the release of political prisoners and the freer operation of political parties. Such consequences are what liberalization means.

Schmitter argued that all autocratic regimes have tried this process, and that this process is normally triggered by divisions within the regimes or succession struggles, where regimes feel the need to open up. The kind of liberalization that takes place depends on the type of autocracy present. But the objective of liberalization, Schmitter said, is to coopt and produce a large social basis for autocracy, for example, through cultivating political parties that agree not to be too oppositional.

Schmitter added that many autocracies are under pressure from external regimes. Most of the countries in the Middle East have some kind of agreement with the EU for example, which carries clauses on issues like the rule of law. Another factor is that liberalization is selective in its inclusion, focusing on the urban middle class. It is thus "voluntary", conceded from above by the regime, and not based on any form of mobilization from below. In other words, Schmitter argued that regimes choose to liberalize and are not forced to do so. Thus, regimes are limited in their scope of liberalization (elections for example are not always genuinely free). He then presented a scale of measures of autocracy liberalization, saying that the most difficult measure in the Middle East is that of releasing political prisoners, while the easiest measure is concessions on the level of human rights.

He presented the hypothesis is that almost all efforts at democratization are preceded by liberalization. This is triggered by the resurrection of civil society, which itself is triggered when the costs of repression increase quite significantly and a regime is faced with the question of is it "better" to repress or tolerate? Often, in this case, regimes choose to tolerate the self organization of groups that are not tolerated otherwise. But mobilization of such groups, like lawyer groups, may lead to mobilization on the street. Schmitter said that although Arab regimes liberalize, this kind of process does not normally happen in the Middle East. Liberalization occurs then declines without the regimes suffering many consequences. He finished by stating that there seems to be something in the Middle East region that encourages liberalization, but that leads this liberalization to decline.

Sean Yom responded by saying that for the last 10 years, scholars of democratization literature have made ethnocentric assumptions about this issue. He argued that it is almost assumed that democracy is easy, but what actually happens at the end stage of liberalization is complex. He said that if we take a historical view of the Middle East, the literature says that regimes are durable. But countries like Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria have all witnessed regime termination. The dictators today in the Arab world are merely the winners of the state-building process.  So why is liberalization not followed by democratization for these survivors?

Yom argued that distinctive regimes have distinctive ways through which they liberalize but not democratize. He related the lack of democratization following on from liberalization to two key questions: Why are there no elite splits in the public arena during times of crisis? And why has the middle class not staked any sacrifice to demand more of a democratic and revolutionary change?

He presented two reasons: the first is that many current regimes have well institutionalized methods of dealing with elite splits before they hit the public domain. Hegemonic ruling provide one such mechanism. The National Democratic Party in Egypt, the Neo-Destur of Tunisia, and the Baath parties in Syria and Iraq for example were able to coopt/isolate softline elites well before their conflict became rebellion.  Yom argued that in monarchical autocracies, incumbents have just as well-institutionalized mechanisms of co-optation that revolve around the palace; such networks were developed shortly after colonial rule, and were designed to effectively enshrine a certain distribution of power.

The second reason, Yom argued, lays in the nature of social opposition.  No dictator liberalizes because they want to give up power.  That is, they do not liberalize to achieve democracy; they liberalize in order to survive in the face of burgeoning social unrest.  The problem is that in the MENA context, the so-called "middle-sector"-labor, professionals, intellectuals, and other urban forces-have not staked out sacrifice to their demands for greater freedom, when push comes to shove.  One reason is that they were incorporated into ruling coalitions early on in the state-building process, and that such early coalitional bargains that traded loyalty for prosperity have proven durable even during economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s.  For instance, large-scale employment in the public sector to certain groups is a common side-payment.  Countries like Jordan and Bahrain exploit population cleavages (the Palestinians and the Shiites, respectively, being the key factors), where the regimes operate an optimal mix of loyalty and oppression/coercion.  In these cases, leaders strategically choose to incorporate different constituents into different networks of patronage.

The presentations were followed by a question and answer sessions where additional factors were discussed and others elaborated on, such as the role of Islamists; authoritarian pacts with the West especially in the cases of "countries that are too important to be politically conditioned" as Schmitter put it, or in the case of illegal Western dealings with Middle East states which makes it difficult for the West to present them with reform conditions; the absence of independent middle classes; and the issue of political prisoners, who are the hardest to coopt by any given regime, and hence tend to be kept inside prisons.

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Larry Diamond: How to save democracy

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Bush gave democracy promotion a bad name, Larry Diamond writes in Newsweek. The new administration needs to get it right.

The new U.S. President will face more than one kind of global recession. In addition to the economic downturn, the world is suffering a democratic contraction. In Russia, awash with oil money, Vladimir Putin and his KGB cronies have sharply restricted freedom. In Latin America, authoritarian (and anti-American) populism is on the rise. In Nigeria, the Philippines and once again in Pakistan, democracy is foundering amid massive corruption, weak government and a loss of public faith. In Thailand, the government is paralyzed by mass protests. In Africa, more than a dozen fragile democracies must face the economic storm unprepared. And in the Middle East—the Bush administration's great democratic showcase—the push for freedom lies in ruins.

In the past decade, the breathtaking democratic wave that swept the world during the final quarter of the 20th century reversed course. Making democracy work proved harder than bringing down authoritarian rule. And receptive peoples everywhere were alienated by the arrogance and unilateralism of President George W. Bush's approach, which associated "democracy promotion" with the use of force and squandered America's soft power. Advancing democracy abroad remains vital to the U.S. national interest. But the next president will have to craft a more modest, realistic and sustainable strategy.

It's easy today to forget how far freedom has advanced in the past 30 years. When the wave of liberation began in 1974 in Portugal, barely a quarter of the world's states met the minimal test of democracy: a place where the people are able, through universal suffrage, to choose and replace their leaders in regular, free and fair elections. Over the course of the next two decades, dictatorships gave way to freely elected governments first in Southern Europe, then in Latin America, then in East Asia. Finally, an explosion of freedom in the early '90s liberated Eastern Europe and spread democracy from Moscow to Pretoria. Old assumptions—that democracy required Western values, high levels of education and a large middle class—crumbled. Half of sub-Saharan Africa's 48 states became democracies, and of the world's poorest countries, about two in every five are democracies today.

This great shift coincided with an unprecedented moment of U.S. military, economic and cultural dominance. Not only was America the world's last remaining superpower, but U.S. values—individual freedom, popular sovereignty, limited government and the rule of law—were embraced by progressive leaders around the world. Opinion surveys showed democracy to be the ideal of most people as well.

In recent years, however, this mighty tide has receded. This democratic recession has coincided with Bush's presidency, and can be traced in no small measure to his administration's imperial overreach. But it actually started in 1999, with the military coup in Pakistan, an upheaval welcomed by a public weary of endemic corruption, economic mismanagement and ethnic and political violence. Pakistan's woes exposed more than the growing frailty of a nuclear-weapon state. They were also the harbinger of a more widespread malaise. Many emerging democracies were experiencing similar crises. In Latin America and the post-communist world, and in parts of Asia and Africa, trust in political parties and parliaments was sinking dramatically, as scandals mounted and elected governments defaulted on their vows to control corruption and improve the welfare of ordinary people.

Thanks to bad governance and popular disaffection, democracy has lost ground. Since the start of the democratic wave, 24 states have reverted to authoritarian rule. Two thirds of these reversals have occurred in the past nine years—and included some big and important states such as Russia, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Thailand and (if one takes seriously the definition of democracy) Nigeria and the Philippines as well. Pakistan and Thailand have recently returned to rule by elected civilians, and Bangladesh is about to do so, but ongoing crises keep public confidence low. Democracy is also threatened in Bolivia and Ecuador, which confront rising levels of political polarization. And other strategically important democracies once thought to be doing well—Turkey, South Africa and Ukraine—face serious strains.

This isn't to say there haven't been a few heartening successes in recent years. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has become a robust democracy nearly a decade after its turbulent transition from authoritarian rule. Brazil, under the left-leaning Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has also strengthened its democratic institutions while maintaining fiscal discipline and a market orientation and reducing poverty. In Africa, Ghana has maintained a quite liberal democracy while generating significant economic growth, and several smaller African countries have moved in this direction.

But the combination of tough economic times, diminished U.S. power and the renewed energy of major authoritarian states will pose a stiff challenge to some 60 insecure democracies in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the former Soviet bloc. If they don't strengthen their political institutions, reduce corruption and figure out how to govern more effectively, many of these democracies could fail in the coming years.

Part of the tragedy is that Washington has made things worse, not better. The Bush administration was right that spreading democracy would advance the U.S. national interest—that truly democratic states would be more responsible, peaceful and law-abiding and so become better contributors to international security. But the administration's unilateral and self-righteous approach led it to overestimate U.S. power and rush the dynamics of change, while exposing itself to charges of hypocrisy with its use of torture and the abuse of due process in the war on terror. Instead of advancing freedom and democracy in the Middle East, 2005 and 2006 witnessed a series of embarrassing shocks: Hamas winning in the Palestinian territories and Islamist parties winning in Iraq; Hizbullah surging in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood surging in Egypt. After a brief moment of optimism, the United States backed away and Middle Eastern democrats grew embittered.

The new American administration will have to fashion a fresh approach—and fast. That will mean setting clear priorities and bringing objectives into alignment with means. The United States does not have the power, resources or moral standing to quickly transform the world's entrenched dictatorships. Besides, isolating and confronting them never seems to work: in Cuba, for example, this policy has been a total failure. This does not mean that the United States should not support democratic change in places like Cuba, Burma, Iran and Syria. But it needs a more subtle and sophisticated approach.

The best strategy would be to open up such places to the freer flow of people, goods, ideas and information. The next administration should therefore start by immediately lifting the self-defeating embargo on Cuba. It should offer to establish full diplomatic ties with Havana and free flows of trade and investment in exchange for a Cuban commitment to improve human rights. Washington should also work with Tehran to hammer out a comprehensive deal that would lift economic sanctions, renounce the use of force to effect regime change and incorporate Iran into the WTO, in exchange for a verifiable halt to nuclear-weapons development, more responsible behavior on Iraq and terrorism, and improved human-rights protection and monitoring. Critics will charge that talking to such odious governments only legitimizes them. In fact, engaging closed societies is the best way to foster democratic change.

At the same time, the United States should continue to support diaspora groups that seek peaceful democratic change back home, and should expand international radio broadcasting, through the Voice of America and more specialized efforts, that transmits independent news and information as well as democratic values and ideas.

In the near term, however, Washington must focus on shoring up existing democracies. Fragile states need assistance to help them adjust to the shocks of the current economic crisis. But they also need deep reforms to strengthen their democratic institutions and improve governance. This will require coordinated help from America and its Western allies to do three things.

First, they must ramp up technical assistance and training programs to help the machinery of government—parliaments, local authorities, courts, executive agencies and regulatory institutions—work more transparently and deliver what people want: the rule of law, less corruption, fair elections and a government that responds to their economic and social needs. This also means strengthening democratic oversight.

Second, we know from experience that these kinds of assistance don't work unless the political leaders on the receiving end are willing to let them. So we need to generate strong incentives for rulers to opt for a different logic of governance, one that defines success as delivering development and reducing poverty rather than skimming public resources and buying support or rigging elections. This will mean setting clear conditions that will have to be met before economic and political aid is doled out to governments.

The third priority is to expand assistance to independent organizations, mass media and think tanks in these fragile states that will increase public demand for better governance and monitor what governments do. This means aiding democratic professional associations, trade unions, chambers of commerce, student groups and organizations devoted to human rights, women's rights, transparency, civic education, election monitoring and countless other democratic activities. Ordinary people must be educated to know their rights and responsibilities as citizens—and be ready to defend them.

While Western countries have provided this kind of aid for more than two decades, economic assistance handed out at the same time has often undermined democracy efforts by subsidizing corrupt, abusive governments. Aid donors should thus strike a new bargain with recipients, telling them: if you get serious about containing corruption, building a rule of law and improving people's lives, we will get serious about helping you. Those that show a real commitment should get significant new rewards of aid and freer trade. Those unwilling to reform should get little, though the West should continue to fight disease and directly help people in dire need wherever they are.

Finally, the new president should keep in mind the power of example. Washington can't promote democracy abroad if it erodes it at home. The contradictions between the rhetoric of Bush's "freedom agenda" and the realities of Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, torture, warrantless surveillance and boundless executive privilege have led even many of the United States' natural allies to dismiss U.S. efforts as hypocritical. Thus the new president must immediately shut down Guantánamo and unequivocally renounce the use of torture; few gestures would restore American credibility more quickly. The United States should also reduce the power of lobbyists, enhance executive and legislative transparency and reform campaign-finance rules—both for its own good and for the message it would send.

Make no mistake: thanks to the global economic crisis and antidemocratic trends, things may get worse before they get better. But supporting democracy abroad advances U.S. national interests and engages universal human aspirations. A more consistent, realistic and multilateral approach will help to secure at-risk democracies and plant the seeds of freedom in oppressed countries. Patience, persistence and savvy diplomacy will serve the next president far better than moralistic rhetoric that divides the world into good and evil. We've seen where that got us.

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