democracy promotion and arab autocracies
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Democracy promotion and ArabautocraciesBenjamin MacQueen aa National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, Asia Institute ,University of Melbourne , AustraliaPublished online: 04 Jun 2009.
To cite this article: Benjamin MacQueen (2009) Democracy promotion and Arab autocracies,Global Change, Peace & Security: formerly Pacifica Review: Peace, Security & Global Change, 21:2,165-178, DOI: 10.1080/14781150902872034
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Democracy promotion and Arab autocracies
Benjamin MacQueen�
National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, Asia Institute,
University of Melbourne, Australia
This article explores the intersection between the policy of democracy promotion and thepolitical dynamics of change in the Arab world. Based on extensive field research, thisarticle unpacks the resilience of Arab regimes, asking the question: has the policy of democ-racy promotion assisted in the maintenance of autocratic and authoritarian regimes in theArab world? Here, it is argued that the democracy promotion policy of the GeorgeW. Bush administration has enabled autocratic and authoritarian regimes across this regionto enhance their capacity for social penetration and to exploit a lack of effort to promotethe idea of democracy, facilitating direct and indirect modes of repression against oppositionforces that have drawn from democracy promotion funding. This has enabled these regimes toenhance the processes of elite change, co-option and imitative institution building that havebeen central to their resilience in the face of seemingly unavoidable challenges.
Keywords: democracy promotion; Arab world; autocracy; US foreign policy; Bushadministration
Introduction
Whilst much has been said and written on the radical interventions by the Bush administration
across the Middle East in the name of democracy, the volume of debate has obscured the not
only the details of the policy, but has also clouded how this policy has actually impacted the
Arab world. This article is an attempt to explore the intersection between democracy promotion
and the political dynamics of change in the region. More specifically, it seeks to examine how a
policy aimed at promoting political reform has affected an already highly volatile political
environment. Due to the resilience of autocratic and authoritarian regimes across the Arab
world, this article asks the question: has the policy of democracy promotion assisted in the
maintenance of autocratic and authoritarian regimes in the Arab world?
Autocratic regimes across the region have been successful in overcoming potentially
terminal threats to their rule through the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, they have presented
remarkable resilience, displaying an ability not only to survive crucial challenges but to also
re-establish greater levels of control and social penetration. In this, three modes of resilience
are presented here as central to their survival; elite change, co-option and imitative institution
building. Here, the democracy promotion policy of the George W. Bush administration has
enhanced the ability of regional regimes for social penetration, particularly through civil
society, and it has also enabled states to exploit a lack of effort to promote the idea of democracy,
facilitating direct and indirect modes of repression against opposition forces that have drawn
from democracy promotion funding.
�Email: [email protected]
Global Change, Peace & Security
Vol. 21, No. 2, June 2009, 165–178
ISSN 1478-1158 print/ISSN 1478-1166 online
# 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14781150902872034
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Democracy promotion and the legacy of history
Democracy promotion has a long history in US foreign policy, indeed, it may be claimed that it is
an intrinsic part of US liberal exceptionalism, a cornerstone of American political culture, where
the expansion of democracy abroad is seen as a key element of ensuring US national security or
pursuing national interest. Jonathan Monten provides a useful characterisation of American
democracy promotion into two broad trends, exemplarism and vindicationalism.1 Simply put,
the exemplarist tradition is based on a belief that the promotion of democracy abroad is best
pursued through its exemplary application domestically where the vindicationalist tradition
seeks its promotion through a policy of active export. Underlying the exemplarist perspective,
there is a view of US liberal democracy as organic or natural, the preferred model of human
organisation that will inevitably spread globally where the vindicationalist perspective tends
to view the world as inherently illiberal; therefore, it is America’s mission to combat this
through the active export of its political example.
In other words, borrowing Joseph Nye’s famous typology, exemplarism is a form of ‘soft
power’ approach based on the perceived appeal of the US liberal democratic model where
vindicationalism is a form of ‘hard power’ focused on the actual application of US political and
military muscle.2 Whilst the exemplarist soft power tradition of public diplomacy has been
historically dominant, the vindicationalist position has become the most formative approach
under the Presidential administration of George W. Bush.3 Here, neoconservatism is a doctrinal
expression of vindicationalist democracy promotion tradition focused on how US interests are
best served through ‘the assertion of US military strength, resolve, and political values’ abroad
linked to a belief in the universality and exportability of these values, in US power being inherently
positive and benign, and in the ability of the United States to promote change.4
The vindicationalist manifestation of democracy promotion policy under the Bush adminis-
tration has its immediate roots in the crystallisation of democracy promotion institutions during
the Reagan Presidency. These institutions were shaped by the democratic ‘Third Wave’ of the
late 1970s and 1980s alongside the transitionalist perspective on democratic development.5 The
Third Wave, representative for some of the ‘End of History’ and the triumph of liberal democ-
racy, contained within it a particular view of democratic transition.6 In particular, the need for
favourable economic conditions, the active support of outside powers, as well as previous
experiences with democracy. This view built on the work of O’Donnell, Schmitter and
Whitehead who, in their work on transitions from authoritarian rule in Latin America, articulated
the transitionalist approach to democratic change, that included the Third Wave-ist’s broad
structural preconditions alongside a focus on linear transitions from authoritarianism to
democracy; elections as the key indicators of this transition; ‘organic’ staged or sequenced
transitions that are resistant to mitigating structural factors; and the centrality of free market
reforms to this process.7
1 Jonathan Monten, ‘The Roots of the Bush Doctrine: Power, Nationalism, and Democracy Promotion in U.S. Strategy’,International Security 29, no. 4 (2005): 120.
2 Joseph Nye, ‘The Changing Nature of World Power’, Political Science Quarterly 105, no. 2 (1990): 177–92.3 Emad El-Din Aysha, ‘September 11 and the Middle East Failure of US “Soft Power”: Globalisation contra American-
isation in the “New” US Century’, International Relations 19, no. 2 (2005): 193; Thomas Carothers, Is GradualismPossible? Choosing a Strategy for Promoting Democracy in the Middle East (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowmentfor International Peace, 2003), 5.
4 Monten, ‘The Roots of the Bush Doctrine’, 143.5 Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1991).6 Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest, 16 (1989).7 Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule:
Prospects for Democracy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).
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The assumptions of this model have come under increasing question, notably as they have
failed to account for the ‘dysfunctional equilibrium’ that many non-democratic states have
been able to achieve since the Third Wave, the emergence of what Larry Diamond has labelled
as ‘hybrid regimes’, where liberal and electoral democracies emerged alongside electoral
authoritarian regimes, pseudo-democracies and politically closed regimes.8 This form of
liberalised autocracy with its ‘mixture of guided pluralism, controlled elections, and selective
repression’, initially thought an aberration or simple survival strategy, is in fact a particular
form of political system that challenges the very fundamentals of the transitionalist approach
to democratic development and promotion.9 Despite this, the Third Wave-ist and transitionalist
perspectives are still highly influential amongst democracy promotion analysts and policy
advisors in the State Department and other key agencies, notably USAID, the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), and even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the
World Bank (WB).
This is a problem of content, one expressed not only by recipients of democracy promotion
assistance across the Arab world but also by some within policy-making circles in Washington.
Specifically, the influence of Eastern European and Latin American experiences from the 1970s
to the 1990s left both the administration and many in the State Department with a heavy focus on
the manifestation of electoral processes, notably on elections, as the key, if not sole symbol of
democratic development.10 The policy drew heavily from Huntington’s early work on the need
for institutional development to underpin regime stability in developing states.11 Huntington, the
architect of the Third Wave school, focused on the establishment and proliferation of political
institutions to counter instability in rapidly changing societies. However, as both Steven Cook
and Kirin Aziz Chaudhry have shown, Huntington’s argument at this point was not particularly
concerned with democratic development; instead, stability during transition was central.12
This was a misguided application of the importance of institutional development, allowing, as
is outlined below, a hijacking of institutional development around apparent democratic trans-
formation, a ‘perverse institutionalization’ that has enabled an ‘upgrading (of) authoritarianism’
rather than genuine democratic development.13
In addition to a focus on democratic process, there has been an intense level of support for the
strengthening of civil society as a central element in countering state authority and assisting the
development of pluralist politics. Again, this is a perspective heavily indebted to the experiences
of Eastern European and, to a lesser extent, Latin American transitions to democracy. In
particular, there has been much commentary around the creation of a ‘Helsinki-type process’
in the Middle East, a scenario that was seen as better suited to the region where rapid change
in Eastern Europe had just taken place with a similar pace of change envisioned for the
8 Thomas Carothers, ‘The End of the Transition Paradigm’, Journal of Democracy 13, no. 1 (2002): 13; Larry Diamond,‘Elections Without Democracy: Thinking About Hybrid Regimes’, Journal of Democracy 13, no. 1 (2002): 25.
9 Daniel Brumberg, ‘Democratization in the Arab World? The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy’, Journal of Democracy13, no. 4 (2002): 56.
10 Michele Dunne (senior associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), in discussion with the author, 14January 2008, Washington DC; Tamara Wittes (senior fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Studies, BrookingsInstitute), in discussion with the author, 15 January 2008, Washington DC; Discussion with senior official,USAID, 15 January 2008, Washington DC; Author’s discussion with senior diplomatic official, 29 January 2008,Amman; Author’s discussion with senior official, Egyptian Bar Association, 5 January 2008, Cairo.
11 Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).12 Steven Cook, Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria and
Turkey (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Kirin Aziz Chaudhry, The Price of Wealth: Econ-omies and Institutions in the Middle East (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).
13 On perverse institutionalization, see Maria Olavarrıa, ‘Protected Neoliberalism: Perverse Institutionalization and theCrisis of Representation’, Latin American Perspectives 30, no. 6 (2003): 10–38; Ergun Ozbudun, ContemporaryTurkish Politics: The Challenges to Democratic Consolidation (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 23; on upgradingauthoritarianism, see Steven Heydemann, ‘Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World’ (Washington DC: TheSaban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, October 2007): 1, (parenthesis added).
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region.14 The Helsinki Process centred on negotiations between the United States and Western
European states with Warsaw Pact states in terms of security agreements. A key part of this
process was the inclusion of guarantees for human rights norms enshrined in the ‘Helsinki
Final Act’ signed in 1975.15 These human rights norms were given more substance in subsequent
meetings, allowing for more pressure to be placed on unwilling states to co-operate and allow for
increasingly greater measures of political freedoms across Eastern Europe. This instigated a
process whereby dissidents, particularly within civil society organisations, behind the Iron
Curtain were able to establish themselves as increasingly viable alternatives to the existing
political elites, providing the political infrastructure needed for democratic transition with the
collapse of communism after 1989.
The Helsinki Process has been highly influential in the thinking amongst many within the
State Department (where Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) and USAID are located)
as well as within the White House. However, there are several key differences between the scen-
ario in Eastern Europe in the 1980s and the Arab world of the early twentieth century, not least of
which being the prospect of EU membership,16 concerted pressure for political reform from
outside since the end of WWII, as well as the relative ease with which Eastern European econ-
omies have been integrated into the European and global economy. Despite this, some within the
State Department and the White House have been candid in stating that there is still a resonant
romanticism around this period, shaping the thinking of key decision-makers in their post-11
September engagement with the Arab world under the banner of democracy promotion.17
Indeed, these trends have converged under the current administration to form the ‘perfect
vindicationalist storm’ since 11 September, captured in the Bush Doctrine.18
Briefly, the Bush Doctrine put forth the case for a vindicationalist democracy promotion policy
based on an application of US unipolarity; a program, it was argued, was essential to US political
and security interests. The core of this revolved around a shift in previous applications of democ-
racy promotion that largely ignored the Middle East. Instead, President Bush presented what he
called a ‘Forward Strategy of Freedom’ or ‘Freedom Agenda’ in the region that, in theory,
would require the United States to place democratic development central to all their activities in
their relations with all regional states.19 In pursuit of this, President Bush promoted the role of
the State Department as a democracy promotion agency, downplaying the role of those previously
at the forefront, notably USAID, allegedly due to ‘ideological differences’.20 These ‘differences’
centred on the latitude to be given to different democratic processes. In other words, USAID
had taken a far more liberal or flexible view as to what constituted democracy, defined as ‘democ-
racy on their own terms’ whereas the White House, it was alleged, was driven by a far more specific
idea of what constitutes democracy.21 In effect, USAID was reigned in, bought under the direct
authority of the State Department and also reflected the view of the administration that this
14 Agnieszka Paczynska, ‘Re-Creating the Helsinki Process: Lessons of Eastern European Transition for Middle EastDemocratization’, (Baltimore: Center for Transatlantic Relations, School of Advanced International Studies, TheJohns Hopkins University, 2004), 8, available at http://transatlantic.sais-jhu.edu/PDF/publications/opinions0328Final.pdf (accessed 14 May 2008).
15 For a copy of the Helsinki Final Act, see www.hri.org/docs/Helsinki75.html.16 Steven Cook uses this point effectively in highlighting the differences in political change and the mitigation of the
role of the military in politics between Turkey (undergoing EU membership negotiations) and the slower pace ofchange in Egypt and Algeria. See Cook, Ruling But Not Governing, 12.
17 Discussions with author, 14 January 2008–15 January 2008, Washington, DC.18 Monten, ‘The Roots of the Bush Doctrine’, 140.19 See George W. Bush, ‘President Bush Calls for a “Forward Strategy of Freedom” to promote Democracy in the
Middle East’, The White House, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031106-11.html (accessed14 May 2008); Condaleeza Rice, ‘Remarks at the American University of Cairo’, US Department of State,www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/48328.htm (accessed 14 May 2008).
20 Discussion with senior official, USAID, 15 January 2008, Washington DC.21 Ibid.
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policy of democracy promotion ‘should be part and parcel of US foreign policy, as part of its larger
idea that foreign aid as a whole (was) not hewing closely enough to US foreign policy objectives’.22
This change challenges the assumption that the policy is hollow, merely a front for more insidious
interests. Instead, there was, and indeed still is, a genuine belief in this policy within the White
House. However, the policy itself, its conceptual and operational basis, is deeply flawed.
In pursuit of this, the White House created the MEPI in 2002 as a complement to the
impending invasion of Iraq as an institution to promote ‘indigenous calls for enduring
change’ in the region.23 Similarly, in 2002 the White House established the Millennium
Challenge Account, a funding agency charged with linking aid to 17 indicators ranging across
three clusters: ‘Investing in People’ (health and education), ‘Promoting Economic Freedom’
(free market reforms as set by the IMF and WB) and ‘Governing Justly’ (political and civil
rights as defined by Freedom House).24 Freedom House is an interesting case in the milieu sur-
rounding democracy promotion. It has been charged with being stacked with Bush government
appointees, an allegation that may carry some weight despite officials from the organisation
being at pains to assert their independence from the administration.25 Putting aside questions
of political interference, the organisation itself is directed by an effort to identify and aid
agents across the globe, including the Arab world, focused on what they claim as the promotion
of human rights according to international standards and democracy.26
However, whilst Freedom House claims to simply ‘identify and connect with key reformist
elements’, it is the mode of selection of these ‘elements’ and the priority given to certain
processes that is indicative of a particular understanding of democratic development.27 More
specifically, the organisation is guided by a focus on the strengthening of civil society under
the assumption that a more visible and more numerous civil society directly equates with demo-
cratic development. In addition, there is a focus on process, where the establishment of visible
political institutions also equates with democratic development. As shall be evidenced below,
these assumptions are not only flawed, they have tended to work counter-productively in
terms of promoting political reform and democratic development in the Arab world.
Modes of regime resilience in the Arab world
Before turning to the specifics of how this policy has worked to re-enforce, or been exploited
in the effort at re-enforcement of autocracy and authoritarianism across the Arab world, it is
important to take time to map out the means by which these regimes have employed to
ensure their survival. Since the 1980s and 1990s, Arab states have been searching for new struc-
tures by which control over their population can be maintained without opening up the core of
decision-making power. This search has stemmed from a gradual collapse, particularly outside
the oil-producing states, of state legitimacy based on allocative power and centralised develop-
mental projects. In this, there have been three dominant modes employed by regimes to ensure
their resilience: elite change; co-option and division of opposition; and imitative institution
building. These mechanisms have been used to insulate political elites in an atmosphere of
22 Thomas Carothers, U.S. Democracy Promotion During and After Bush (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment forInternational Peace, 2007): 30 (parenthesis added).
23 Jon Alterman (senior fellow, CSIS), in discussion with the author, 15 January 2008, Washington, DC; see MiddleEast Partnership Initiative, ‘The Middle East Partnership Initiative’, US Department of State, mepi.state.gov/outreach/index.htm (accessed 12 September 2007).
24 Millennium Challenge Corporation, ‘Indicators’, Millennium Challenge Corporation, www.mcc.gov/selection/indicators/index.php (accessed 23 September 2007).
25 Richard Eisendorf (senior program manager, Freedom House), in discussion with the author, 15 January 2008,Washington, DC.
26 Eisendorf, discussion with author.27 Eisendorf, discussion with author.
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changing political dynamics, particularly new forms of social contract and the collapse of
systems that relied on the allocative power associated with the corporatist state combined
with centralist developmental concepts.
The rotation of elites has been a particularly effective tool within Arab states for generating
the appearance of change whilst avoiding challenges to the core of decision-making structures.
For instance, in recent years this process of elite rotation has been a shift of many from the
private sector into the decision-making structure with many former regime figures entering
the private sector. This is an emergent trend in Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Tunisia, and even
Jordan and Yemen; however, this has a far longer pedigree in Lebanon where the two sectors
have been intimately linked for decades.
Algeria provides an illuminating example of elite change in two ways. First, there has been a
rotation of power amongst many mid-level generals. Through to the 1980s, the vast majority of
the military high command came from the ‘BTS triangle’, an area between the towns of
Batna, Tebessa and Souk Ahras in the east of Algeria; however, this has shifted in recent years
to officers from the Algiers wilayat (province) as well as from Oran in the West.28 This has
bought a new cadre of elites, with diminished familial allegiances through the elite structure of
the country. Second, the economic fallout from the civil war alongside the IMF-sponsored
structural adjustment programs implemented by the government opened up avenues for the
emerging economically powerful generation to exert some pressure on the regime for influence.
Whilst this ‘only marginally affected the rules of domination’, it allowed for many new actors
‘to enter the political stage’.29 This was a profound shift as Algeria has had a remarkably stable
elite structure since independence in 1962, even in the context of the Arab world. This is not to
say that these new elites are a fundamental challenge to this; instead it is evidence of the
resilience of the decision-making structure to be able to renew and insulate itself from pressures
for change as well as to effectively deploy a mechanism that can divide potential opposition.
In this regard, elite change is part of a broader process of the co-option of opposition or
potential opposition forces, a process designed to widen the regime’s power base as well as
disperse and divide potentially threatening opposition. The process is an attempt to reconstruct
previously eroded patronage systems, particularly those based on the structure of the single
party and its ‘downstream’ networks. Here, regimes have been able to give the impression
that political space is being opened up through the inclusion of new groups in the political
structure. In reality, however, this is an extension of a patronage network where prominent
business people, civil society figures and others are allowed some access to the power structure
but are actually subsumed within this system.
Egypt provides an interesting example of this process at work. A review of the initially much
heralded constitutional changes passed in early 2007 highlights this. In particular, they have
worked to further divide the legal opposition, increase the barriers for the illegal opposition,
namely the Muslim Brotherhood, and even open up a mechanism whereby President Hosni
Mubarak can facilitate the transfer of the presidency to his son Gamal. Whilst some of the
amendments increase the power of the parliament and remove most references to socialism in
the constitution, there are several amendments that ‘infringe dangerously on human rights
protections and close off possibilities for peaceful political activity’.30 Whilst there are overt
manifestations of continued closed political rule, notably the extension of the state of
28 Lahouari Addi, ‘Army Divided Over Algeria’s Future’, Le Monde diplomatique, Paris, March 1999, 3; BenjaminMacQueen, ‘Civil War, Conflict Resolution and Culture in Lebanon and Algeria’ (PhD thesis, Deakin University,2006), 29.
29 Isabelle Werenfels, ‘Algeria: System Continuity Through Elite Change’ in Arab Elites: Negotiating the Politics ofChange, ed. Volker Perthes (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 175.
30 Nathan J. Brown and Michele Dunne, Egypt’s Controversial Constitutional Amendments: A Textual Analysis,(Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007), 1.
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emergency, one of the most prominent themes of the amendments is its targeting of the Muslim
Brotherhood, the only viable threat to the ascendancy of the President and the ruling National
Democratic Party (NDP), headed by Gamal Mubarak.
Amended article 5 is the key government tool, where the constitution now forbids both the
formation of any political party as well as ‘any political activity’ by groups formed ‘on the
basis of religion’ and ‘with any religious frame of reference’.31 This was a response to the attempts
by the Muslim Brotherhood, in 2006, to change the party’s platform as a means to subvert previous
constitutional amendments that banned only political activity by parties formed on the basis of
religion. This is not a total prevention of political activity for the Muslim Brotherhood who
have been allowed to run in legislative elections as independents since 1990; however, alterations
to article 62 changes the electoral system from one of mixed electoral lists to one that relies
primarily on party lists that will greatly limit the potential success of independent candidates.
This was also designed to further link the legal leftist and liberal parties (Wafd, Ghad,
Tagammu and Nasserist) to the regime. That is, the Brotherhood presents not only the biggest
challenge to the regime but to other competing political parties in the country. Therefore, it is
in the interest of these parties in such a restricted political environment to help undermine the
Brotherhood. This is a highly effective mechanism by which the regime has both co-opted
the legal opposition and divided the opposition as a whole. For their part, the legal opposition
parties, ‘conscious of their weaknesses and their inability to pose a challenge to the regime
. . . have come to rely on the regime to ensure their survival’, thus, they have accepted these
changes with minimal objection.32 The State Department responded largely favourably to
these changes, arguing that these signal ‘a general trend towards greater political reform,
greater political openness, [and] a more direct correlation between . . . the will and needs and
hopes of the Egyptian people and those whom they elect’.33
This process of co-option in Egypt is well documented. William Zartman’s somewhat
prophetic position that opposition in many Arab societies may actually work to strengthen
rather than challenge authoritarian regimes, was given greater resonance in relation to Egypt
by Holger Albrecht.34 For Zartman, a tolerated and controlled opposition served as an effective
pressure valve through which the government could defuse and control tension and dissent
whilst reserving its coercive mechanism for more direct challenges to its rule. In this regard,
the Mubarak regime has been able to co-opt and control opposition within its own political
elite (integrated dissent) as well as the legalised political parties (tolerated opposition) whilst
successfully marginalising the more dangerous anti-systemic movements such as the Muslim
Brotherhood and key intellectuals.35
The process of regime maintenance also allows the decision-making structure in these
societies to control and manipulate seemingly democratic institutions, notably the parliament,
judiciary and even non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for their own ends. Indeed, whilst
the number of NGOs across the region has ballooned in recent years, most cannot be classified
as non-governmental as many have direct or indirect links to the government. They serve as a
mechanism for the regime to read popular mood and attempt to defuse it without actually
giving up real power as well as serving as an effective tool for pitting potentially powerful
oppositional groups against each other as a means to diffuse tension.
31 The Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt, www.uam.es/otroscentros/medina/egypt/egypolcon.htm(accessed 20 April 2009).
32 Brown and Dunne, Egypt’s Controversial Constitutional Amendments, 9.33 Quoted in ibid., 10.34 William Zartman, ‘Opposition as Support of the State’ in Beyond Coercion: The Durability of the Arab State, ed.
Adeed Daweesha and William Zartman (London: Croom Helm, 1988), 61–87; Holger Albrecht, ‘How CanOpposition Support Authoritarianism? Lessons from Egypt’, Democratization 12, no. 3 (2005): 378.
35 Albrecht, ‘How Can Opposition Support Authoritarianism?’, 380.
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Regime resilience and democracy promotion
This issue of civil society provides a segue to the impacts of democracy promotion on this
process. Namely, it opens a window into how the priorities of the democracy promotion
policy, particularly its focus on the strengthening of civil society and the surface institutions
of democracy. The structure and priorities of this policy have fed into the ability of regimes
across the Arab world to resist pressures for political liberalisation, particularly those regimes
that have struggled with the maintenance of their rule since the 1980s and 1990s, namely
Egypt, Algeria, Syria, and to a lesser extent Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen.
Firstly, the logic in understanding the behaviour of these regimes is that they are focused
above all else on their survival. This comes in the face of a severe economic downturn in the
1970s and 1980s combined with a deficiency of popular legitimacy domestically, factors that
contributed to the breakdown of the corporatist state through the 1980s and 1990s. This dire
situation would appear to put these states in the realm of imminent collapse, or at least recurrent
social unrest and a reliance on direct repression to maintain rule. However, the apparent
resilience of these regimes and the absence of a sole reliance on direct repression makes it
apparent that regimes have developed, or are in the process of developing, new and innovative
forms of rule. It is not a particular Arab cultural exceptionalism or resistance to democracy,
instead, what we have witnessed is the success of a particularly flexible, complex and resolute
style of authoritarianism.36
Through to the 1990s, the survival tactics of these states gave them what Nazih Ayubi
famously characterised as a ‘fierce’ nature.37 Ayubi’s characterisation highlighted how most
Arab states are not a ‘natural growth of [their] own socio-economic history or [their] own cul-
tural and intellectual tradition’; therefore, whilst they appear ‘strong in material/military terms’,
they are chronically weak in terms of ‘infrastructural power’ and ‘ideological hegemony’.38
Whilst the collapse of the corporatist model may have necessarily been a fatal blow, the
divide and rule method employed before and during this change enabled the state to maintain
a degree of ‘relative autonomy’ from society.39 The corporatist model had enabled the state,
or the elite controlling state institutions, to prevent the formation of alternative centres of
power. Regional states are now currently in the process of seeking to find new replacements
for this, efforts that have manifested in new forms of liberalised autocracy.
Mechanisms of regime resilience have in recent years allowed Arab states to overcome a
reliance on ‘fierce’ techniques of survival and re-establish their authority and control. This is
not to say Ayubi was mistaken, his analysis simply captured a moment in time in the develop-
ment of the Arab state. Mechanisms of regime resilience continue to be exerted through
unofficial channels, notably patronage networks, shadow economies and even into civil
society itself. Whilst there is a long tradition in literature on political change and democratic
development concerning the importance of civil society in this process, in many parts of the
Arab world, to simply equate a growing civil society with evidence of democratic development
is erroneous. For instance, Amaney Jamal has outlined how the assumption of a strong civil
society equalling a stronger likelihood of democratic development is not always true.40
36 Holger Albrecht and Oliver Schlumberger, ‘“Waiting for Godot”: Regime Change Without Democratization in theMiddle East’, International Political Studies Review 25, no. 4 (2004): 386; see also Katerina Dalacoura, ‘USDemocracy Promotion in the Arab Middle East since 11 September 2001: A Critique’, International Affairs 81,no. 5 (2005): 963–79.
37 Nazih Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995), 3.38 Ibid., 3, 445–59 (parenthesis added).39 Ralph Miliband, Class Power and State Power (London: Verso, 1983); Nicos Poulantzas, L’Etat, le pouvoir, le
socialisme (Paris: PUF, 1978).40 Amaney Jamal, Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 5.
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Instead, there is a tendency, if not a discernable trend, for civil society organisations, particularly
in states where there is a high degree of authoritarian control exercised, to simply reproduce
prevailing conditions.41 In other words, civil society organisations help strengthen democracy
in already democratic states, yet they have a tendency to perpetuate closed political structures
in authoritarian states. This is largely due to their lack of autonomy and control in these
systems. They are open to manipulation by the regimes, in effect enabling the regimes to
defuse and control oppositional trends.
Such a view is echoed elsewhere, namely that the proliferation of civil society agencies,
NGOs and other entities have not served as democratic forerunners. Instead, civil society in
the Arab world, to this point, ‘on the whole has not been a force for democratisation’.42 This
belies the assumption that has been too often made amongst democracy promotion agencies
in Washington that civil society is innately democratic. However, when surveying civil
society organs across the region, the majority are, as Amy Hawthorne has observed, supportive
of the status quo, only marginally reformist or altogether apolitical.43 Civil society has the
potential to serve as a catalyst for democratic transformation, but its mere presence alone
does not imply that democratic change is inevitable.
Jamal and Hawthorne’s comments echo the earlier observations of Antonio Gramsci, and
highlight the changes within Arab political systems since Nazih Ayubi famously coined the
notion of the ‘fierce state’.44 According to Ayubi, where common conceptualisations of state
capabilities are often related to ‘weakness/strength’ or the state being ‘soft/hard’, the fierce
state differs in that its interests are often contradictory to that of the society over which it
rules.45 A strong state, for instance, is able to establish its authority through, using the Gramscian
conceptualisation, a combination of coercion and legitimacy. Coercion serves as the ‘raw power’
of the state while hegemony is the process of state interests being assumed by civil society.46
Thus, the state need not rely on coercion as its interests are taken on by the citizenry as their
own through civil society. This ‘capacity for social penetration’ had been lacking in most, if
not all, Arab states up to the 1990s, leaving them to rely on their coercive apparatus to
enforce their interests. The state therefore displayed fierce tendencies because it relied on coer-
cive tools and enforces them through vertical social relations, social relations that have been
hijacked from pre-existing forms and, as Hisham Sharabi contends, given a modern face.47
However, in recent years, Arab states have been far more successful in exerting control over
civil society and political institutions as a means through which they can exert hegemony in
the Gramscian sense (that is, an enhanced capacity for social penetration). It is the irony of
the democracy promotion process, undertaken by the United States as well as increasingly
by the UN, that the very avenues they seek to strengthen (first elections, then civil society
and political institutions), each feed into the ability of these regimes to perpetuate themselves.
In addition, most Arab states implemented economic liberalisation programs as a means
to access global markets as well as a response to pressure from institutions such as the IMF
and WB (structural adjustment programs) from the 1980s. Political liberalisation followed on
from economic liberalisation as those who were affected by new economic development
41 Ibid., 7.42 Amy Hawthorne, ‘Middle Eastern Democracy: Is Civil Society the Answer?’, Carnegie Papers: Middle East Series
44 (2004), 4.43 Ibid., 4.44 Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State, 450; David Forgacs, ed., A Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916–1935
(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 20.45 Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State, 431; Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations
and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 8.46 Forgacs, A Gramsci Reader, 22.47 Hisham Sharabi, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988), 43.
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pressed for more political representation or power in political decision-making. Regimes
sought to control this process with the single party usually the first sacrifice to apparent political
liberalisation, an effort to capture public support for the ruling elite and attaching the loss of
legitimacy to the single party.
This is most starkly displayed in how the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) and the regime
had formally ‘divorced’ during the late 1980s, with the interim leaders to 1994 and President
Zeroual both operating as independent political players.48 President Bouteflika established an
alternative state party in 1999, the National Democratic Rally (RND), whilst the FLN sought to
establish itself as an increasingly independent political party through the 1990s despite having
substantial representation in successive governments.49 This furthered the breakdown of the
pre-existing forms of social contract, with the political elite of regional states breaking away
from the single party as the ‘providential’ expression of the state ‘taking care’ of the citizenry.
This furthered domestic unrest, discontent that revealed itself in the so-called ‘bread riots’.
In terms of democratisation, and contrary to the lessons of the transitionalist model that
argues for ‘high economic performance with corresponding high levels of democracy’,50 along-
side statements from the Bush administration that ‘free markets and free trade’ are central to the
process of democratisation,51 when viewing patterns of democratic change in the region the
opposite trend is revealed where it is the poorer-performing Arab states in terms of GDP that
have had more evident democratic experiments (although they have been short-lived) compared
to the richer Arab states (with the partial exception of Kuwait). The influence of petrodollars
cannot be underestimated in this dynamic, allowing oil-producing states to maintain their
relative autonomy. This has led to the inflation of state power, which controls ‘most socio-
economic functions’, blocking the rise of ‘autonomous societal power centers [sic]’, and
turning ‘much of the working population into de facto state clients whose livelihoods depend
on the public purse’.52 This cut across to the non-oil-producing states until the collapse of oil
prices in the 1980s where oil-derived aid from richer states helped regimes Cairo, Amman,
and elsewhere to perpetuate a similar system.
Economic downturn through the 1980s and the implementation of structural adjustment
packages in Arab economies led directly to large scale civil unrest.53 These protests were
‘semi-spontaneous and mass expressions of popular concern’ over the impact of these pro-
grams.54 They were a symptom of the shift away from the pre-existing social bargain, the col-
lapse of the corporatist state. No longer would the state be the provider of welfare, food, jobs,
housing, etc. This was a shift to the market based economy which in effect was a breakdown
of the old order, and therefore a breakdown of the state’s claims to legitimacy. The biggest
losers of this disarticulation of the corporatist model were the lower classes who suffered the
brunt of economic reforms and also were the first to be excluded from the political process as
the state divorced itself from the single party. This left a vacuum that was increasingly filled
by ‘political chaos and a government response of authoritarianism’, as well as the possibility
for other organisations, notably Islamist movements.55
48 MacQueen, ‘Civil War, Culture and Conflict Resolution’, 178.49 Hugh Roberts, The Battlefield – Algeria: 1988–2002 (London: Verso, 2003), 181.50 See, notably, Seymour Martin Lipset, ‘Some Social Requisites for Democracy: Economic Development and Politi-
cal Legitimacy’, The American Political Science Review 53 (1959).51 The White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: The White
House, 2002), 23.52 Larbi Sadiki, ‘Popular Uprisings and Arab Democratization’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 32, no. 1
(2000): 87.53 Examples of this include Egypt in 1977 and 1984, Morocco in 1980, 1981 and 1984, Tunisia in 1984, Sudan in 1985,
Algeria in 1988 and Jordan in 1989.54 Anoushivaran Ehteshami and Emma C. Murphy, ‘Transformation of the Corporatist State in the Middle East’, Third
World Quarterly 17, no. 4 (1996): 767.55 Ibid., 769.
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In light of this, the influence of democracy promotion as a force helping to maintain
autocratic rule in the region is most clearly seen in these connections between economic and
political reforms and how these have intersected with pressures for political change. Political
liberalisations in the Arab world, whilst guided, have generally been as a response to pressure
from below, with a resultant trend towards ‘“parliamentarization” and “electoralization”,
without yet presaging polyarchal rule’.56 Concurrently, there has been intense pressure on
many Arab states since the end of the Cold War to reduce or eliminate state intervention in
the form of, for instance, food subsidies. These states are caught in a bind where their resistance
to the imposition of IMF/WB-sponsored structural adjustment programs can place them on the
outer of the global economic system whilst adherence to them creates the very real possibility of
social unrest. This helps explain the focus on social welfare amongst many Islamist movements
in the region, and their resonant allegations of moral bankruptcy against regimes who undertake
structural adjustment programs. Therefore, a direct correlation can be made between the unrest
that springs from structural adjustment programs (the so-called ‘bread riots’), free market
reforms and popular support for Islamist movements. In response, the United States has reflex-
ively shifted support behind regional regimes and other ‘friendly’ elements, helping reinforce
the established political order.
The previous ascendance of the corporatist state, what Larbi Sadiki has called dımuqratiyyat
al-khubz (democracy of the bread), not only fostered a complacent body politic, but one that
was increasingly alienated from elite politics. In light of this, the popular disaffection with
deteriorating economic conditions expressed through the bread riots can be seen as a vote of
no-confidence in governments where there are no political channels for popular expression.57
As a result, many regimes ceded to these expressions in terms of developing channels for
political expression through (largely token) electoral processes. It was into this environment,
where the state was vulnerable, and seeking to cede token forms of political engagement as a
means to counter opposition, that the democracy promotion policy entered. Regimes in the
region have been able to exploit this to buttress themselves through a new model of marginal
inclusion which, in essence, works to co-opt key social forces and maintain the rule of elites.
These reforms do not cut to the centre of power, however, as there is no turnover of authority
and no independent judiciary or parliament to monitor the behaviour of these elites. This
form of marginal inclusion, of a liberalised form of autocracy, has been read in democracy
promotion circles as the first step on an inevitable path towards democracy.
Compounding this has been the over-arching rhetoric and sentiment surrounding the ‘War on
Terror’. Here, the Middle East ‘Freedom Agenda’ outlined in George W. Bush’s second inaugural
address sought to link the 11 September attacks explicitly to the lack of democracy in the region;
therefore, it committed the United States in terms of its national interest as well as through its
‘exceptional mission’ to actively intervene to address this. This was an open-ended US
commitment to both identify and act against any groups (states or non-state actors) it deemed
to be feeding into this source of insecurity and act against them.58 In addition, through its
binary frame of reference (‘with us or against us’), it compelled the United States to employ
the services of regional regimes as cohorts in this campaign. Apart from raising an obvious
dilemma whereby the United States was forced to increase their support for non-democratic
regimes, it also enabled regimes to more effectively employ their repressive apparatus.
A final element stems from the assumption within US democracy promotion policy is that no
effort need be expended on promoting the idea of democracy, that its benefits were self-evident
in large part due to the perception that globalisation had tilted the ‘ideological–informational
56 Larbi Sadiki, ‘Popular Uprisings and Arab Democratization’, 71.57 Ibid., 79. Sadiki uses khubz/bread as an analogy for these basic services.58 Carothers, U.S. Democracy Promotion.
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playing field to US advantage’.59 In this, it was expected that there would be a ‘natural’ or
‘organic’ gravitation of people toward the US liberal democratic model. However, the expansion
of regional media in the Arab Middle East and North Africa, particularly satellite television, has
loosened the US grip on the flow of information.60 Such a development has seen large sections of
the Arab public able to access both images and ideas, particularly those critical of US foreign
policy and the links between US democracy promotion policy and the War on Terror.
Whilst this link has been exploited by regional autocracies to validate the use of state security
and legislative apparatuses to repress and divide opposition, it has also helped breed popular
discontent with regimes and their main external supporter, the United States. The net effect of
this has been the flow of support to opposition movements who are critical of regimes in Cairo,
Algiers, Beirut and elsewhere whilst also being critical of US support for these regimes. This
leads policy-makers in Washington to again confront a recurrent dilemma; namely, what
happens when a genuinely popular movement emerges that is critical, or even dismissive, not
only of US regional policy but the very model the United States is seeking implement in the
region? The most common response, as has been the case in Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon and
elsewhere, is to work with ‘friendly’ or ‘compliant’ elements within these states, most often the
regimes themselves and the co-opted elements of the so-called opposition, to undermine potential
adversaries. This feeds directly into the ability of autocratic regimes across the Arab world to
sustain their rule and to keep opposition marginalised and repressed where otherwise they may
be able to generate greater momentum to challenge the lack of political space.
Going back to Nye’s characterisation of US ‘soft power’, he saw this as the foundation of US
post-Cold War hegemony.61 However, in regards to globalisation and the media in the Arab
world, the trend has proved counter-intuitive. The chaotic efforts by the United States to
exploit their media dominance, particularly since the first Gulf War of 1990, have opened up
one of the few avenues through which Arab citizens can witness both the persistent lack of
political freedoms across the region and the active role of the US in supporting many of these
regimes. This link has driven many to reject the models of political transformation put
forward by the United States, and has subsequently led the United States to throw its weight
behind existing autocracies for fear of emergent hostile political movements.
Far from pressuring these regimes to engage in meaningful political transformation toward
greater pluralism, it is argued here that the policy of democracy promotion as specifically
articulated within the Bush administration has been manipulated by regional regimes to help
ensure their survival. It has given many states a new set of tools to supplant their declining
legitimacy through the manipulation of democracy promotion rhetoric, the free market focus
of the policy, the War on Terror, and a deterioration of America’s regional standing.
Therefore, it is important not to equate democratisation with the appearance of democratic
institutions; instead, it is more accurate to focus on how these institutions are controlled. The
political transformations occurring in the Arab region in the last five years have not led to
any contestation for decision-making power; alternatively, there have been manoeuvrings on
the part of political elites to insulate themselves against these challenges. It is here that democ-
racy promotion practitioners and policy makers have had a tendency to fall into a ‘democratiza-
tion trap’ whereby institutional political change is mistaken for a step along the inevitable path
towards democratisation; instead, this should be viewed as a tactic employed by an authoritarian
regime to continue its survival.62
59 Emad El-Din Aysha, ‘September 11 and the Middle East Failure of US “Soft Power”‘, 193.60 Imad Karam, ‘Satellite Television: A Breathing Space for Arab Youth?’ in Arab Media and Political Renewal:
Community, Legitimacy and Public Life, ed. Naomi Sakr (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007).61 Nye, ‘The Changing Nature of World Power’.62 Albrecht and Schlumberger, ‘Waiting for Godot’, 375.
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Conclusion
The policy of democracy promotion has been exploited by regimes across the region in their
efforts at survival. This is not to claim that it has served as the only mechanism by which
these regimes have endured, but is illustrative of their innovation and resilience. The irony of
this situation, where a policy has helped entrench the very thing it was designed to change,
has not been lost on many both within Washington and across the Arab world. The difficulty
facing those who were seeking to promote democracy from outside and the agents of pluralist
reforms within the region face an almost insurmountable task. However, the ill-conceived
policy employed by the Bush administration, one that was driven by a fervent ideology and
an inappropriate conceptual basis, has been exploited with seeming ease by highly resilient
autocratic and authoritarian regimes.
This raises important questions in terms of the unintended effects of foreign policy, in terms
of how non-democratic regimes maintain their rule in changing global circumstances, as well as
in terms of broader processes of political change. Overly prescriptive approaches, it would
appear, do not work. Nor does a direct military challenge to regimes. Whilst this may lead to
the overthrow of one regime, it strengthens the hand of other closed regimes in the region. A
re-evaluation of how much change can be expected through external assistance is required,
one that focuses on what external parties can do in removing the obstacles to political pluralism
rather than actively intervene and implement change from the outside-in.
Such a re-evaluation must, however unpalatable, engage with the prospect of luring existing
regimes into a reform process with positive inducements. For example, the use of ‘political con-
ditionality and incentive for membership’ has gone far in pushing Turkey as well as many
Eastern European states toward greater standards of political pluralism in their search for acces-
sion to the EU.63 Granted, a similar possibility or framework does not exist on either side of the
equation vis-a-vis the United States and the Arab world. Despite this, negative inducements have
dominated the view of US efforts to promote democracy whilst positive inducements have been
limited by a lack of funding in Washington and the too-often confused messages coming from
the White House and key democracy promotion agencies.
Opportunities do exist for what Adam Przeworski and more recently Steven Cook see as
the vital ‘extrication’ phase of democratic reform.64 Essentially, this is a process of pact-
based transformation where political elites gradually shift their exercise of authority from
informal to the hitherto weak formal political institutions. These institutions, over which
elites maintain a degree of control, are gradually made increasingly open to competition and
rotation of power with in-built guarantees for elites that such transformation would not be
immediate and unmanageable.
This is certainly a best-case scenario with myriad contingencies that must be relied upon
to prevent a regression to previous scenarios. Indeed, it is possible to claim that the changes in
autocratic-style rule in recent years mirrors exactly what these elites may do in a pact scenario,
simply be involved until too much power is seen to be slipping away then simply pull back.
However, if this conditioned transition is coupled with genuine incentives, as is seen in the
European examples, a reform process may slowly gain momentum to the point where the costs
of withdrawal can outweigh any potential gains of re-asserting autocratic rule. Efforts in
Washington have been made to make foreign or military aid contingent on political reform.
63 Elena Baracani, ‘Pre-accession and Neighbourhood: Evaluating the European Union’s Democracy PromotionActivities in Turkey and Morocco’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association,San Diego, USA, June 27 2008).
64 Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and LatinAmerica (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 78–9; Steven A. Cook, ‘The Promise of Pacts’,Journal of Democracy 17, no. 1 (2006): 64.
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These have been piecemeal at best. What is required is a more co-ordinated and concerted effort at
making conditional free trade negotiations as well as accession to institutions such as the WTO
dependent on such reform. By complementing a manageable pace of change, a realistic vision for
what an external policy can achieve, as well as co-ordinated and substantial positive incentives
for regional elites to buy into the process of reform, then it may be possible to achieve longer-
term, though less immediately visible, progress in this regard.
Acknowledgements
This paper stems from research conducted by the author between January and March 2008 in the United States, Lebanon,Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Algeria, the UAE and France. The author wishes to acknowledge the Australian Research Councilfor enabling this research as well as the various civil society figures, academics, analysts, political figures and others whoagreed to interviews with the author.
Note on contributor
Benjamin MacQueen is an Australian Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow at the National Centre ofExcellence for Islamic Studies, the University of Melbourne. He is currently leading a research projectin conjunction with the Australian National University examining the impacts of US foreign policy onpolitical change in the Middle East and Central Asia. He has also published on areas related to MiddleEastern and North African politics and society, conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction,Islamic reformism and Islam and human rights, as well as lecturing for many years in the areas ofMiddle Eastern politics and international relations.
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