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Democracy in the Middle East?
By Henry E. Mattox, Editor
"Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, by all the people, for all the people."
Theodore Parker, July 4, 1858
Would that the underlying circumstances and beliefs were different! Would that U.S. intervention might result in a democratic beginning in Iraq and a flowering of popular rule in Afghanistan! Such a welcome development, one that would serve as a springboard for launching an area-wide movement toward representative government, is fervently to be wished for. And here I do not suggest that such a change would need to incorporate a range of Western ideas and practices; only democratization of the political arena.
Numerous knowledgeable observers of the Middle East scene express fundamental doubts, however, about Washington's effort through military campaigns to implant and spread democracy in the region.
Well such doubters might have serious reservations about the feasibility of such a transformation. It is all too easy to cite chapter and verse about the rarity of elective government in what constituted the last of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. Even a quick glance at the Middle East's modern development indicates that popular rule has found little receptivity in that region.
European political assumptions about government, developed over several centuries, have been accepted and almost taken for granted elsewhere; if not pure democracy in the Swiss model, a belief in government by some form of consent of the governed can be found in a major share of the world's nations and peoples. Erstwhile absolutist monarchies perforce subscribe to democratic forms. Cuba of the former sprawling communist bloc is one of the few nations that continues to do without the bother of elections. The numerous fascist dictatorships of the twentieth century have long since been consigned to the dust bins of history, replaced by democracies, most notably in Germany and Japan.
Thus, some form of what can be called "democracy," a political system developed over a long period of time and at the cost of much strife and bloodshed, has become a leading political form globally.
One vital element of this model of governance is the idea of secular rule on the basis of legislation enacted by peoples' elected representatives. This perspective hardly occasions discussion in most nations where European forms have taken root -- this even in countries where not all votes count or are always counted. The doctrine nonetheless prevails.
Acceptance of this central requirement for democratic governance has not been evident, even tentatively or in principle, in most of the non-Turkish-speaking regions of the Middle East. The region has had well over 1,000 years of adherence to Holy Law that governs all things, including government itself. To the basic precepts of Western democracy -- secular rule in a society that has its laws made by persons more or less freely elected by the adult populace -- Middle Easterners have had less than a century of exposure. This concept of secular preiminence, given the hold that religion has on the Middle Eastern populace, perhaps understandably finds slight resonance in the region.
Democracy in some form thus, while taken for granted as a political system in large parts of the world, is an alien creed in the key states of Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, Iran, and Kuwait, if not also in Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. Efforts by foreigners to plant the seeds of Western-style democracy in those areas unfortunately stand only a slight chance of success in the lifetimes of anyone reading these words. The expectation that Western democracy can be exported to the region, especially through force of arms, is unrealistically optimistic, even if the January elections in Iraq somehow take place as scheduled. At an absolute minimum, much, much more time will be required if democracy is ever to have a chance effectively to take hold.
December 4, 2004