Authoritarianism in the Arab world

Dr. Tahseen Mahmood Aslam looks at an anachronism

Authoritarianism in the Arab world – The main concern of the contemporary world is the presence of authoritarian regimes that withheld the civil and human rights of their citizens. This issue is starkly visible in the Arab world that is predominantly riddled with authoritarian governance with the result that the people inhabiting these states are largely devoid of basic human rights. This state of affairs is not seen positively around the world and there are strong exceptions taking by many countries against the authoritarianism prevalent in the Arab world. The current situation in the Arab core of the Middle East is that among eleven countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates were placed in the not free category and only five Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon and Morocco in the partly free category. Interestingly, these Arab countries are underachievers in electoral competitiveness though the ones amongst them having oil wealth are economically prosperous but are managed in authoritarian manner, much to the chagrin of international human right groups.

It does not seem convincing to attribute the Arab democracy gap to certain inherent characteristics of the Arab political culture. Therefore, one should look for political, rather than ethnic or religious, particularities of the region to explain such exceptionalism. One explanation of the prevalence of authoritarianism is related to the historical conditions under which Arab states emerged as many contemporary Arab states have relatively new and arbitrary boundaries cut out of the Ottoman Empire and were afterward occupied and colonised by European powers. Compounding this problem of state identity is the widespread appeal of pan-Arabism in many parts of the region, based on a common language and common religion. Against this background, it is remarkable that the new Arab territorial states have shown a high degree of resilience and durability. Another related factor is the impact of the colonial or semi-colonial experience in the political culture of Arab states, where independence from foreign rule was the dominant objective overshadowing concerns such as democracy and human rights.

A second explanation centres on the concept of rentier state. Many Arab countries are rich in oil and natural gas reserves. The vast income deriving from these sources enabled the ruling elites to buy or co-opt some elements of the potential opposition as well as satisfy the basic material needs of a large majority of the population. This has had a retarding effect on the emergence of an independent bourgeoisie that is the driving force for democratisation in Muslim as well as other countries. It is often stated that Muslim democracy needs the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie needs Muslim democracy. Nevertheless, the rentier state hypothesis cannot explain the prevalence of authoritarianism in oil-poor Arab states. A third argument, perhaps the most convincing one, provides a cyclical explanation. Thus, the repressive policies of Arab authoritarian rulers against all opposition groups, secular and Islamist alike, and their refusal to even partially liberalise the system radicalise the opposition. The chief beneficiary of this process is the Islamist opposition, much stronger, more broadly based, and better organised than secular opposition groups.

This, in turn, increases the perception of threat on the part of the ruling groups and is used to justify even more repressive policies. This fear, although highly exaggerated and manipulated, is also vivid within the Turkish state elites, particularly the military and the judiciary and it constitutes one of the most formidable roadblocks on the way to further democratisation. The feeling of an Islamist threat also leads to a paradoxical situation in that liberal or secular opposition groups that should normally have been on the side of democratic reforms also support repressive policies against the Islamist opposition. The alliance between potential democrats and the authoritarian states in the Middle East is the reverse of the political reform process in Eastern Europe. In the latter cases, the not too democratic elites nonetheless found democratic procedures useful for dealing with the opponents of the regime, thereby leading to a democracy without democrats. In the Middle East, by contrast, fear of Islamist victories has produced autocracy with democrats, as potential democrats now actively support or at least tolerate autocrats as a lesser evil than an Islamist regime.

The dilemma of the authoritarian rulers in the Middle East explains the zigzagged course of liberalisation policies. It has been observed that periods of relative liberalisation have often been followed by those of deliberalisation. Although in some Arab countries, such as Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Kuwait and Egypt, controlled or semi-competitive elections have taken place, and moderate advances have been made in areas such as the freedom of the press, association, and assembly, none of these regimes has advanced beyond the level of electoral authoritarianism. And yet it seems a fruitful line of inquiry to distinguish between the relatively more successful and less successful of these cases. Experts distinguish between dissonant states and harmonic states. The dissonant states leave some room for competitive or dissonant politics. The examples are Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and Lebanon.

That such regimes, however autocratic, recognise and do not attempt to destroy societal pluralism creates an arena for competition and negotiation. The harmonic states, on the other hand, in their attempt to impose an often artificial unity through repression and cooptation, leave little room for negotiation and compromise and create a deadly game of winner takes all. These are the states based on an ideology, be it Islam, Arab socialism and a strong sense of mission that attempt to mould the society according to their image of the good society. Such states are characterised as ends-oriented states implying that since the mission is considered sacred, debates over ends or means are seen as subversive or blasphemous. The dissonant Arab states and those in the non-Arab parts of the Muslim world permitted a degree of electoral competition that, in turn, helped moderate the Islamist groups and integrate them into the political system.

Turkey is the leading example of this process, where the earlier Islamist parties were transformed into a moderate, center-right, conservative Democratic Party (the AKP). Other examples include Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan. Similar processes are under way in Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait and Lebanon. It is observed that competitive elections push religious parties toward pragmatism and make other parties more sensitive to Islamic values in a game to win the middle. Electoral competition may eventually lead to a situation of democracy without democrats and this surely is much more preferable to that of autocracy with democrats. The early optimism and enthusiasm about the global resurgence of democracy have been replaced by a sense of greater realism. It is clear that authoritarian regimes, in one variety or other, have shown greater resilience and staying power than originally anticipated, using a skillful mixture of coercion, co-optation, divide-and-rule tactics and selective democratic openings. However, just as the prospects for sustaining full-scale authoritarian regimes in an age of democratisation are not good, so are the prospects for electoral authoritarian regimes. The uneasy mixture of democratic and authoritarian elements creates an inherent source of instability with the possibility of going in the direction of either electoral democracies or less competitive hegemonic authoritarian regimes. The Weekender