Relation Of The Democratisation Theory - Arab Spring
Democratisation is defined as a change in political regime within a sovereign state from non- democracy to democracy. It is a process that changes political life, it is not an event. This essay will discuss how the early modernisation theory analysis of provisions proved uncertain and cultural exceptional arguments are identified merely as an intervening variable in regards to the Arab Spring. The theories of development imbalances and nation building set backs are the main reasons as to why democracy failed in the Middle East and North Africa.
Samuel Huntingdon had described this global change as “Democracy’s Third Wave”. Most democratic transitions, resembling what had occurred during the Arab Spring are mostly due to either political pacts, breakdowns between civil and military elites, international pressure or in this case grassroots movements demanding a change. The Middle East and North Africa saw mass social protests for democratisation and justice that led to the disintegrating of the longstanding authoritarian governments in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011. The financial meltdown of 2008 in the Middle East and North Africa had a consequently global economic crisis which led to rising food prices, resulting in strikes and street protests in Egypt. There and elsewhere in the region, the mixture of high unemployment, high cost of living, and authoritarian rule heightened popular frustration. The protests then spread quickly to Morocco in February 2011 in a rush to get justice from the authoritarian regimes. The protests sparked elections in Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt. Despite the uprisings that led to the Arab Spring; Egypt, Libya, or Tunisia under the dictatorships of Mubarak, Qadhafi, and Ben Ali, these countries have never had a fully institutionalised totalitarian regime.
Current democratisation theory lends itself to the early modernisation approach of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Seymour Martin Lipset argued in 1959 through his modernisation approach, the importance of various social and economic aspects are essential to either liberal democracies or are required for democratisation. He demonstrated and directly linked democracy to the socio-economic development of modernisation of a country. He classified large groups of states in categories: stable and unstable democracies and dictatorships. He consequently compared them in terms of wealth and levels of industrialisation, education and urbanisation. The modernisation approach argued that beyond certain thresholds of economic development, societies became too multifaceted and socially organised to be governed by authoritarian means.
The modernisation approach exhibited that countries of a high income were more likely to be democratic and rising urbanisation, literacy and non-agricultural employment which are indicators of social mobilisation were associated with a heightened tendency to political participation. The modernisation approach however has problems in identifying the precipices of modernisation required for democracy and beyond which authoritarianism ceases to be feasible. In addition, modernisation levels are not conclusive and they constitute to an environment that may be more or less facilitative of certain kinds of regime, preventing democracy only at the very lowest levels and authoritarianism only at the very highest levels. Consequently, the modernisation approach can merely suggest that middle-income levels representative of the contemporary Middle East, democratisation is possible by no means necessary but it also exhibits about what conditions allow authoritarianism to remain possible at such levels.
As a direct challenge to Lipset’s thesis both in terms of the approach and the essence of the arguments used, Dankwurt Rustow had claimed that factors that stabilise a democratic regime ‘may not be the ones that brought it into existence’ and that many paths to democracy may exist. He further went on to say democratisation need not be a ‘socially uniform’ process and that the views of citizens may differ from the views of the politicians who live in the same place at the same time. The relevance of the democratisation theory seems more questionable in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Some have always regarded the region as exceptionally culturally resistant to democratisation and the Middle East's and North Africa’s early liberal regimes quickly gave way to seemingly tough authoritarianism after independence. Despite this, many scholars identified a growing demand for democratisation and some movement towards it in the 1990s.
Given the vagueness, the Middle East and North Africa can be interpreted to be generally compatible with the argument that modernisation matters. Nonetheless, because democratisation did not happen in the Middle East and North Africa at the income levels that produced some democratisation somewhere else, some may argue that the cultural exceptionalism has decreased the relationship between increased development and increased democratisation. Islam is no restriction to democratisation. Islamic parties in many countries have illustrated a support for democracy by participating in elections, however they are only likely to be an obstacle to democratisation when radicalised. The association of higher levels of modernisation indicators such as literacy and modern employment with higher political awareness holds no less in the Middle East and North Africa than elsewhere and modern Islamism makes a positive religious duty of public participation.
Arguably, culture and religion has two impacts. It is important in terms of shaping notions of political legitimacy and it is also plausible to say that Islamic traditions accept authoritarian leadership as long as it seems to serve the collective interest of the community as well as defending them from outside threats and deliver welfare which makes people feel entitled. This essentially populist idea of leadership legitimacy is likely to be tolerant of populist versions of authoritarian rule.
Modern Islamic concepts of leadership do also integrate accountability, and nowadays when authoritarian leadership fails to live up to Islamic standards it suffers de-legitimation widely, with Muslims forming or joining opposition movements. In the Middle East and North Africa, conceptions of legitimacy are hardly fixed and they have not been unaffected by beliefs that procedural practices of electoral democracy might be the best way to ensure against leadership departure from the legitimate model.
The second impact of culture or religion can originate from the popularity of traditional loyalties. Some may argue that these make it harder to assemble strong political parties or an international civil society. On the other hand some may also argue those authoritarian regimes or its leaders had manipulated this. In short, Middle Eastern and Northern African culture is regarded as not an independent variable which obstructs democratisation but as an intervening variable in which formations of legitimacy are more tolerant of authoritarian leadership under certain conditions.
In the Middle East and North Africa, modernisation was associated with new classes developed from import-export business. The destabilisation of early democracies resulted from the radicalisation of new middle classes. Even in the states with the longest democratic experiences, military intervention in Turkey and civil war in Lebanon could be linked to the inability of semi-democratic institutions to incorporate newly mobilised social forces. Another obstacle to democratisation is the disparity between state and identity from disorganised territorial boundaries under imperialism. Rustow argued that the consolidation of national identity was the first requisite stage in democratic transition; without this, electoral competition would only intensify communal conflict.
In the Middle East and North Africa the disintegration of the Arab world into a multitude of small weak states was the persistence of sub- and supra-state identities that weakened the identification with the state that was needed for stable democracy. In these conditions it’s easier for states to resort to authoritarian solutions where political mobilisation tends to worsen communal conflict or empower movements threatening the integrity of the state. In addition, the Arab Spring highlighted the division of small weak states and the need for democracy as well as overcoming disunity. For this reason, the main popular political movements, namely pan-Arabism and political Islamists, have been inattentive with identity, unity and authenticity, not democratisation. Where they have seized state power, state-building has often taken an authoritarian form, with leaders seeking legitimacy, not through democratic consent but through the championing of identity; Arabism and Islam who are against imperialism and other enemies. The demand for democratisation cannot be met when the political forces that would lead the fight for it have been diverted into other concerns.
One more result of the way state systems were imposed was due to artificial boundaries that built irredentism to the states system. This in turn meant that new states were being caught between security predicaments in which many others perceived as a threat. Among the Arab states the threats led to forms of ideological rebellions. The civil wars between states in the Middle East also exemplified the wars over identity, territory and security. The insecurity and war has naturally paved way to the rise of national security states being hostile towards democratisation. The Arab Spring demonstrated its lack of ‘transition’ into modernisation hence the obstacles to democratisation. The combination of population growth and increased social mobilisation meant the increased economic inequality amongst states suffering political identity makes for an undemocratic environment.
Barrington Moore looked to social structure to explain political paths that states take. In its simplest terms, social structural analysis argues that democracy requires a balance between the state/ruler and independent classes, in which the state is neither wholly autonomous of dominant classes nor captured by them, allowing a space within which civil society can thrive. Despite this, thorough transformation of social structure emerges only at high levels of modernisation.
While modernisation has stimulated social mobility, it had also increased the growth of the educated middle class across the region and this class was initially the product of and dependent on the state. The special feature of the Middle East's political economy, namely rentierism, shapes a certain regional exceptionalism. In many cases where large amounts of rent amass to the state and are distributed as jobs and welfare benefits, ordinary people become highly dependent on the state for their livelihoods therefore, not being required to pay taxes, are discouraged from mobilisation to demand representation. At the same time, the dependence of regimes on external sources of rent, whether oil revenues or aid, attaches the interests of leaders to external markets and states and shields them from accountability to their populations.
Herb in 2005, argues that oil wealth leads to a misrepresentation of economic development on democratisation in oil-rich countries, not to a special kind of rentier authoritarianism. Most bystanders have recognised the difference between Islam and authoritarianism to traditional values held by individual Muslims. Most research also agrees that countries with oil and Muslim populations are less likely to be democratic. It is also confirmed that countries with highly educated populations are more likely to be democratic. Democracy should be seen as a comprehensive and ongoing process at different levels of social existence.
Turkey, the one successful democratic transition in the Arab Spring suggests what conditions might assist it. Turkey’s agreement between identity and territory provided the country with a national identity as well as clarity that democratisation can work and is less risky compared to other Arab states. Turkey was still not spared periodic democratic breakdown, but coups have always been brief and aimed at restoring an elitist version of democracy.
In summary, authoritarianism is the main form of governance in the Middle East for several reasons. The extreme hostile structural conditions that limit modernisation as well as national problems, in particular class organisation. The authoritarian leaders have also found the resources to help build stronger modernised forms of authoritarianism compatible with their environments. These regimes have also assembled institutions incorporating forces that enable them to manage their societies.
Two paths to democratization are possible. If reformist authoritarian regimes can deliver increased rule of law, better regulatory frameworks, educational reforms and merit-based recruitment to the bureaucracy, they could precipitate the investment and economic growth needed to expand the middle class, civil society and an independent bourgeoisie, while increasing regime legitimacy and dampening Islamist radicalism. This would create conditions similar to those that precipitated democratic transition in East Asia. However, this scenario of enhanced regime legitimacy and growing investment confidence is implausible without a resolution of the national problem. That resolution depends on policies outside the control of the Middle East, namely a change in the intrusive and biased Middle East policies of the US hegemon. Democracy would still only come about after a long-term evolution. A second pathway, ‘from below’, is also possible. Assuming that the liabilities of incumbent regimes remain unresolved, regime collapse might provide the conditions for a negotiated democratization pact cutting across the state–society divide. However, as the Iraq case suggests, if this scenario is delivered as a by-product of US intervention or pressure the outcome may well be anarchy, not democracy.
