ARTICLE REVIEW

Diamond, Larry (2010), “Why are there no Arab Democracies?” Journal of Democracy, Volume 21, No.1, Twentieth Anniversary Issue.


Larry Diamond is senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University and director of Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His books include The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies
Throughout the World (2008). He is founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy.

This article opens up to a very conventional question, but with a not so conventional answer. The question of why democracy has not taken deep roots in the Arab speaking world of the Western Asian region has puzzled many with varied responses. The author uses a process of elimination, it rejecting the conventional rationale in explanation of the phenomenon, while forwarding his own explanation in why the democracy as a norm has not established itself in the Arab speaking world. This being the Twentieth Anniversary Issue of the journal, Diamond’s article is a contribution to the larger rubric of ‘Democracy’s Past and Future’.

Diamond rejects the religious and cultural explanations to the question at the very outset. Regarding religion, the work on Alfred Stephan and Graeme Robertson shows an Arab element rather than a Muslim one in the big ‘democracy gap’ among states in the world. India, with a substantial Muslim population, is a democracy. Diamond own analysis on this topic shows that at the end of 2008, the sixteen Arab states of Western Asia had an average score across the two Freedom House scales of 5.53 (the score of 7 signaling “least free”). The other thirty Muslim-majority states had an average freedom score of 4.7. Where culture is concerned, Iraq and Lebanon—for all their fractious, polarized divisions—are the two Arab countries closest to full electoral democracy today. This shows that ethnic or religious differences hardly pose a severe obstacle to democracy in the Arab world than they do in countries such as India, Indonesia, or South Africa.

He also categorically rejects economic development as a cause. He puts forward contrasting cases of Oil rich Gulf States, while the non-oil rich Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia in reasserting the fact that, economic development as a variable again fails to predict the lack. The usual argument suggests that well to do country has a better chance in gaining and keeping democracy.
But in the Arab context, well to do Gulf States are also rentier economies, where there is the usual paradigm of no taxation, no representation. Therefore, the conclusion reached is that economic structure, but not necessarily growth is a contributing reason for the democracy deficit in the Arab World.

The author’s own explanation to this democracy deficit lies in two factors, involving political economy—as well as geopolitics. Regarding the Authoritarian tendencies, it is observed that ‘when pressure mounts, both from within the society and from outside, the regime loosens its constraints and allows more civic activity and a more open electoral arena—until political opposition appears as if it may grow too serious and effective’. This is today proved true in cases like Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab states across the region. Even if there is authoritarian rule in most of the region, it is not solely dependent on coercion, but the reality is much nuanced and adaptive to ground realities.

Regarding that of geopolitics, Diamond notes a two way process in maintaining the authoritarian and undemocratic elements in the Arab World. Apart from the economic structure where oil is found in abundance, these states also have the benefit of having the powerful states at their side. The erstwhile Soviet has been replaced by Britain and United States, but on the structural level, the crucial economic resources, security assistance, and political legitimacy provided by these external powers have remained the same. Two other external factors contribute to this deficit. First is the over-arching Arab Israeli conflict. Where the people cannot vent out there frustration on the corruption and human-rights abuses of Arab regimes, they are incited by these leaders to protest against the Israeli occupation and the plight of the Palestinians. This way, the popular public opinion is often swayed from the immediate realities to the larger Arab-Israeli conflict, diluting their specific anger and frustration into a wider arena. Also, another external factor is that of the other Arab states themselves, who reinforce one another in their authoritarianism, turning the Arab League into a select elite club.

The conclusive predictions which Diamond draws in 2010 are proved to be of much value in the upcoming witnessed situation in the coming year. He is skeptical of whether an indefinite future of authoritarian rule is the future of the region. He lays much stress on the importance of the new social-media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, the blogosphere, and the mobile-phone revolution, which indeed has been playing a part in the recent Arab uprisings in the region. He puts forward three hypotheses which could initiate the urge for democracy in the region. One is the emergence of a single democratic polity in the region, serving as a model to others. Second he sees the role of the U.S. policy to resume principled engagement and more extensive practical assistance to encourage and press for democratic reforms. Finally, he perceived the possibility of the global revolution in energy technology, breaking the oil cartel, as a factor which could end what he calls the ‘Arab political exceptionalism’.

The article is well researched, scholarly and is a vital contribution to the existing debate on the puzzling question of why Arab speaking states usually avoid the democratic aspirations. The article places its argument much on the structural sphere, where, while rejecting the other existing generalizations; some new generalizations are forwarded in its place. On the concluding hypotheses on what could spur the democracy demand in this region, the third remains highly futuristic, on the global revolution in the energy technology. The role of the Arab people themselves is very much subdued while analysing the possible democratic spurs the region may witness. However, his laid predictive emphasis on the new social media-tools in helping dialogue reach democracy has been proven undisputed in today’s terms.