THE PROSPECTS FOR FUTURE DEMOCRATISATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST: A VISION FOR SUCCESSFUL DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION OTTO BARROW
Ten years after the commencement of the Arab Spring, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region appears torn between two visions of progress: a democratic vision replacing the leaders who currently dominate the region, and a modernising one that wishes to replace the people who inhabit it (8). Though the latter project is currently on the ascent, it is likely to founder on its own internal contradictions. While Arab publics across the region may be ambivalent about democracy, the region retains considerable democratic potential. Firstly, the last ten years of the Arab Spring have demonstrated that the region has the potential for democratic change, in stark contrast to its frequent characterisation as destined for despotism. Secondly, different countries’ experiments in democratisation across the region have contributed to the democratic learning curves across the region, especially within the arenas of political life and civil society, as can be demonstrated by comparing the Arab spring in Egypt and the protests in Sudan. Thirdly, the uprisings have resulted in the emergence of some relatively successful cases, whose transition exerts regional repercussions that are symbolic but influential, and lead to changes in approach from even the more authoritarian regimes. Thus, future democratisation and democratic consolidation remains highly possible, and even inevitable as Middle Eastern economies become less resource dependent. Democratisation is the transition to a more democratic political regime, which amounts to substantive political changes moving in a
democratic direction. Democratisation is an overarching phenomenon, which exhibits multiple determinants, from economic development to educational attainment to the spread of mass media (11).
One good example of democratisation can be seen through Europe’s history (1). The development of democracy across Western Europe took place in a range of local contexts and different manners.
As Sheri Berman argues, democracy did not come in an easy or peaceful way, and certainly did not follow a straightforward or stage-like progression. Democratisation is an extended process, and different countries’ attempts at democratisation are replete with varied experiences that are hard to characterise as following one single path (3), but can be generally seen as following two processes. Firstly, there is the “initial transition” from authoritarian rule, installing a democratically elected government paves the way for a ‘second transition’ that is usually more complex and longer than the first (3).
Perhaps the most important consequence of the Arab uprisings is that they ended the age of authoritarian stability which was once strongly associated with the region. To be sure, mass protests occasionally took place across the region even before the ‘Arab Spring’. In Egypt, the Kefaya Movement, which opposed Hosni Mubarak’s fifth presidential term in 2005, and labour strikes that later resulted in the April 6 Youth Movement in 2008, as well as Yemen’s Southern Movement anti-government protests in 2008 and 2009 are all vivid examples of popular mobilisations in the 2000s (3).
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