COMMENTARY

Spring 2010

by Nathan J. Brown

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Khaled Hroub tells us that Western governments have cast aside their own values by working with despotic Arab regimes. The Islamist spectre and the excuse of “cultural specificity” have been used to justify this cynicism, and in those cases where democratisation has been pursued it has only been used against selected adversaries. These claims are all too accurate. Democracy and human rights have been trumpeted as the centrepiece of Western policy, but from Saddam Hussein to Yasser Arafat they have been used primarily as a club to beat those leaders the West doesn't like for reasons unrelated to their despotism. Democracy has been soft-pedalled for cooperative regimes like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and tossed out the window when the would-be beneficiaries have beards.

But I nevertheless have grounds for contesting Khaled Hroub’s conclusion. He writes that the “non-democratisation of the Arab region results from an unholy alliance between Western interests, local autocrats and claims of ‘cultural specificity'." This consists of one mistake, one exaggeration and an erroneous policy lesson.

The mistake is that Hroub tries to explain the absence of democracy, yet for all its current popularity, democracy is in historical terms a rare form of government. It is democracy’s emergence, not its absence, that needs to be explained. Democracy triumphs when entrenched social forces and mobilisable constituencies find that they cannot defeat each other, so they allow strong political institutions to mediate their differences. For the Arab world to democratise, political opposition will have to link to organised constituencies, and that is something that to date only Islamists have done. Existing regimes will have to conclude, like 19th-century Europe’s ruling groups, that they have no alternative but to negotiate the inclusion of those they have been trying to keep out.

Hroub’s exaggeration is his over-emphasis on Western policy when explaining the absence of democracy. Western policy has, to be sure, been ineffectual, hypocritical and damaging. But it is only part of the problem—and therefore changing it is only part of the solution. At best it can aid long-term trends toward democratisation. The real challenge for Western policymakers is to find a way to integrate long-term support for democratisation into policies that are all too often reactive and based on a need to respond to last week’s headlines.

As to the erroneous policy lesson, although Hroub does not prescribe any specific policy, he implies that the best policy might be a revolutionary break with current regimes and an insistence that democratisation be placed at the centre of Western policy. Even if such a path was theoretically wise, and Hroub does not claim that it would be, the story of the Bush Administration’s freedom agenda should caution us against such a path. Bush simply wished away the tension between democracy promotion and other Western interests – with the result that eventually everyone become disillusioned. We need a steadier, long-term policy, not a messianic new vision.

For democracy to emerge in the Arab world, two things must happen: Those with alternative political visions must be free to mobilise their constituencies, and Arab leaders must learn to see their challengers as legitimate political actors. Western powers can contribute to such developments, but low-level assistance to organisations with pleasant but safe agendas will do little to help. The usual types of democracy promotion generally do no harm, and might even do some good, but they need the support of diplomatic muscle. And that can only be delivered by a clear policy that makes it clear that Arab regimes’ relations with the West will be affected by their treatment of opposition groups.

This discussion usually leads directly to the familiar question of whether the West should “engage” with Islamists? The answer is that this is the wrong question. The right ones are: “What can the West do to encourage Arab regimes to engage with Islamists?” and “How can the West encourage Arab regimes to allow reformers to convert armchair theorising into effective – but non-revolutionary – mobilisation?” Engagement must be among competing political visions in the Arab world. Western policymakers can help in modest ways, and if they fail to do so they risk continued political cynicism and radicalism in the region. And even if they opt to do so they must be aware that the pay-off may be a generation away.