Democracy in The Middle East - The State, Democratization and The Middle East

The State, Democratization and The Middle East

Typical explanations offered by analysts, in general, point to the "prerequisite failure" of MENA. The civil society here is seen as weak and thus unable to develop effective countervailing power in society which would force the state to be accountable to popular preferences. The weak associational life or civil society in MENA accounts for the governance "deficit" in the region. They drew from the work of Toqueville and more recently Robert Putnam, that independent, nongovernmental associations would help foster participatory form of governance. The lack of horizontal voluntary association and the persistence of authoritarianism in the region. In the same vein, the lack of a market-driven economy undermines the capacity to build individual autonomy and power. The level of equilibrium or disequilibrium in the state-civil society relations is one of the most important indicators of the chances of democratization and the possibility of its evolution. It is a synergistic relation as without the state it may be difficult for civil society to flourish and develop in a productive way. Further on, poverty, inequality and low literacy rates compromise people's commitment to democratic reforms as this is not a priority for them while, at the same time, the countries in the region are geographically remote from the centre of democratization. Culture, and specifically MENA's saturation with Islam is also a powerful argument used to explain the region's failure to catch the third wave.

Although the explanations above are valid in some cases, they fail in many other instances when particular countries or areas suffering from the same poor endowments succeed in their quest for democratization. In order to understand the rarity of the democratic transition in the MENA region it is necessary to take into account a decisive variable when it comes to democratization: the state.

Inspired by Skopcol’s work on revolution, Belin argues that democratic transition can only be carried out when the state's coercive apparatus lacks the will or capacity to crush it. And, as history reveals, authoritarianism has been exceptionally robust in the MENA because the coercive apparatus in many of the states has proven exceptionally able and willing to crush reform initiatives. In short, the strength, coherence, and effectiveness of the state's coercive apparatus discriminate between cases of successful and failed democratization. And here is where the region’s true exceptionalism lies.

Moreover, almost every Arab state has been directly involved in some form of international conflict over the past decades. Evidence from the literature on the effect of wars on domestic political development suggests that conflict involvement has a direct influence on the country's prospects for democratization.