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US/MIDEAST: Status Quo Stifling Political Reforms

Khody Akhavi

WASHINGTON, Feb 1 2008 (IPS) - In his final State of the Union speech Monday night, President George W. Bush once again reminded the U.S. public of the cornerstone of his administration’s foreign policy: “We trust that people, when given a chance, will choose a future of freedom and peace.”

He cited, as evidence, “stirring images” of liberty from around the Middle East: Lebanese taking to the streets, Afghans emerging from the tyranny of the Taliban, and “jubilant” Iraqis holding up ink-stained index fingers. But in the last seven years, Washington’s pursuit of democracy promotion in the region has been eclipsed by the “war on terror”.

As the president drifts further into irrelevance – repeating the rationale for a disastrous Iraq war and framing the struggle for political liberty in the Middle East as a battle against radical Islamic terrorism – his regional allies have increasingly eschewed Washington’s calls for political reform.

“Whether the U.S. was interested in democracy promotion or not, it came to halting end at the end of 2005 and 2006,” said Samer Shehata, a political science professor at Georgetown University.

Citing the electoral experiences of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian Hamas, as well as the Hezbollah-Israel war, he said: “After that period, many in Washington were saying that [Egyptian] President Mubarak looked very good compared to [Hassan] Nassrallah.”

For citizens of Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, the path to political reform remains obscured. And as their societies grow and advance, there is little evidence to suggest that their leaders have any intention of shifting the status quo or to truly “democratise” their states, according to the authors of a new book examining the region’s chequered history.

“Society and economic systems have changed at a very rapid pace and the political systems have not. There is a feeling that the region is out of synch, not only with the rest of the world. They are out of synch with themselves. Something has to change,” said Marina S. Ottaway, who edited “Beyond the Façade: Political Reform in the Arab World”.

Arab leaders may wish to compare themselves to the “enlightened monarchs” of 18th century Europe, but their “top down” approaches to reform – a vision that begins with the idea of modernising the economy, and culminating in political democratisation – offer cosmetic changes at best. In the absence of institutions, local councils, and parliaments that have the procedural ability to check executive power, it appears the Arab regimes are simply “paying lip service to the idea of political reform,” according to Ottaway, who also heads the Middle East programme at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Either the recent developments reflect a nascent political opening, a “planting of seeds” that may later yield a democratic bounty, she said, or “these countries are simply finding ways to blow off a little steam, to provide the illusion of political participation, and a way to earn some brownie points with the international community.”

Arab leaders are familiar with the language of democracy: calls for reform emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s as many Arab regimes dealt with acute economic crisis brought on by massive budgetary deficits and external debts. Structural adjustment programmes, initiated by international lenders such as the International Monetary Fund, provided highly conditioned loans. Regimes had to privatise inefficient public sectors, change budgetary patterns, and cut subsidies, all of which threatened to shift the economic arrangements of elites.

But economic reform does not necessarily translate into political opening.

“There is no solid evidence that economic growth leads to democracy, or that economic liberalisation leading to economic growth,” said Julia Choucair-Vizoso, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment who co-edited “Beyond the Façade”.

In the case of Egypt, privatisation schemes during the 1990s often served to rearrange elite networks already in place, not bolster economic benefits for lower or middle classes.

Choucair-Vizoso said that there exist few pro-democracy NGOs in the region; they are often co-opted by the state, fragmented, remain heavily dependent on foreign funds, and tend to exhibit a lack of “internal democracy”. As such, civil society has not emerged as a key actor to promote change.

For Arab states to move towards democracy, she said, the pressure for change will have to come from domestic political entities outside the ruling elites. Secular parties remain weak and divided, and due to structural conditions of the system, they have limited space to manoeuvre.

“Secular parties have been plagued by internal schisms and a failure to articulate a coherent agenda or vision,” said Choucair-Vizoso.

The most effective opposition to these authoritarian regimes instead comes from Islamist movements, much to the displeasure of most U.S.-based democracy advocates.

“It is impossible to think about democratisation in the Middle East without thinking about Islamists in some way or another,” said Shehata.

In contrast to secular parties, Islamists retain strong organisational cohesion, and can circumvent certain legal conditions for meeting, including through robust social welfare networks, schools, and the mosque.

“If you go and talk to the representatives of political parties in the Arab world, secular parties often have their offices in the downtown area, in the business district. The Islamists have theirs in poor districts, in slums,” said Ottaway. “They have different ways of approaching the problem of organising.”