Muslim World Initiative

Challenges to Genuine Democratization in the Arab World

Liberalized Autocracy Under Siege

Recent events in Morocco, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon suggest that the edifice of authoritarianism in the Arab world is under unprecedented siege. Incensed by the economic, social and political failings of the region's autocracies, and emboldened by calls from within and outside the Arab world for fundamental political change, a myriad of opposition parties and civil society organizations have issued calls for democracy and reform. Clearly, the barrier of fear that has long pervaded the region has been severely rattled.

While these events are encouraging, their implication for the survival or transformation of the Arab world's autocracies is far from clear. Most of these regimes are not despotisms in the classic sense. Instead, the vast majority are semi-authoritarian composites—liberalized autocracies — that combine a measure of openness in the press, civil society and electoral/parliamentary arenas, with varying degrees of state-managed control and selective repression.

Imagining a Road Map Forward: Three Challenges

A worker puts up an election campaign poster in Baghdad on Dec. 26, 2004. (Courtesy AP/Wide World)

While such regimes are under enormous domestic and global pressures, the path from liberalized autocracy to competitive democracy has not been systematically studied by scholars, or chartered by the relevant players in the Arab world. What we do know is this: liberalized autocracy remains a complex and resilient hybrid, a multi-dimensional system that presents its own particular legacy and distinctive challenges. Thus what is urgently required is a road map that suggests how—if at all—regimes and oppositions can move beyond the boundaries of state-managed liberalization to competitive democracy.

Part of the challenge in imagining this road map derives from the unwritten consensus that has sustained liberalized autocracies, or at least kept them from falling apart. These regimes have survived in part because political elites in both regimes and oppositions have viewed liberalized autocracy as a second best alternative to full democracy.

This tacit consensus has been most evident in countries beset by conflicts over national identity. In Yemen, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, and Algeria, political elites have long feared that full democratization would exacerbate these conflicts by making it possible for the victors of elections to impose their religious, cultural or ethnic agenda on the losers. Thus many elites came to prefer or at least tolerate liberalized autocracy precisely because parliaments and electoral systems that lacked real authority or power nevertheless promoted a measure of peaceful coexistence among competing groups.

Although the consensus that has sustained such accommodations has certainly frayed, liberalized autocracy has bequeathed a troubled legacy, three dimensions of which will complicate the effort to move beyond state managed liberalization.

1) Ambivalence About Full Democratization - Because Islamists can attract a mass constituency through mosques and other religious institutions, they have benefited most from the opportunities for political mobilization afforded by liberalized autocracies. As a result it is not merely regimes that exhibit ambivalence about the risks entailed in moving beyond state-managed liberalization. Such caution can also be found within non-Islamist opposition groups, such as liberals, women's organizations, and ethnic groups such as Kurds and Berbers. Because these groups fear that democratization might empower their Islamist rivals, they have often preferred the imperfections of liberalized autocracy to the black hole of full democratization.

Some Islamists have tried to reduce the fears of these groups by not mounting a decisive challenge to the status quo. Thus during Morocco's 2002 parliamentary elections, the Islamist Justice and Development Party (JDP) chose not to run a full slate of candidates nation-wide, thus coming in third in an election that the JDP might very well have won. But such short-term tactics only accentuate the perceived costs to national stability that full democratization often provokes, without offering any long-term institutional solution other than the persistence of an increasingly fragile status quo.


An Iraqi voter is shown the official ballot by an election worker at a voting location in Iraq. (Courtesy U.S. Central Command)

The identity cleavages that have sustained liberalized autocracy have been exacerbated by socio-economic tensions arising out of efforts to shift from state-managed economies to fee market systems. Because democratic competition could strengthen the hand of groups opposed to privatization and free trade, advocates of market reform have often viewed state-managed political liberalization as a safer alternative to full-scale democratization.

2) A Radical Reform Menu - While allowing for a measure of pluralism in civil society and the press, as well as state-managed competition in parliaments and elections, the institutions, constitutions and laws that have sustained liberalized autocracies remain deeply dysfunctional. "Elected" parliaments often lack the authority to legislate on behalf of their purported constituencies. Indeed, ultimate power remains in the hands of presidents and monarchs who rule through the formal institutions of the executive, or through informal networks and cliques that give decisive power to regime cronies in the military, intelligence community and/ or ruling family. This sad situation has been perpetuated by constitutions and laws that are filled with provisions that emasculate legislatures, and by judiciaries that are largely extensions of the executive.

Thus any transition from liberalized autocracy will require a total overhaul of the existing political system. Absent comprehensive political reforms that give real substance, authority and power to formal political institutions and processes, Arab leaders will continue to undertake the kinds of baby steps that they have long preferred--partial measures that effectively strengthen liberalized autocracy and thus obstruct a transition to competitive democracy.

It is far from clear what the precise nature and content of such reforms should in each country. Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Yemen are all liberalized autocracies in that they tolerate or foster some measure of opposition activity. But these regimes have allowed different degrees (and mixes) of opposition independence and regime hegemony. As a result, the probabilities for making a transition differs from case to case, as does the required mix of constitutional, institutional or legal reforms. Given the paucity of both conceptual and case-specific work on how to move beyond liberalized autocracy, the task of defining the menu or reform remains a vital if difficult challenge.

3) High Stakes Pact Making - Few political actors—especially within the non-Islamist opposition—are well positioned to advance (or take advantage of) dramatic change. As result, whether political change occurs via regime collapse, or as is more likely, via a gradual transformation of existing political systems, the net result will be the same: intense conflict over the economic, political and cultural content of any substantive democratization program. Given this lack of consensus regarding the purposes of democracy, any stable, non-violent and durable transition will probably require a negotiated accommodation or pact within the opposition and then between opposition parties and regimes. How such a pact will be brought about remains a mystery.

A Comparative Study of Transitions in Liberalized Autocracies

What then are the reform options? Among the Arab world's liberalized autocracies, which are most likely to successfully tackle them? To address these and other related questions, USIP is hosting a study project entitled: The Transitions from Liberalized Autocracy? New Options for Promoting Democracy in Arab World. In broad terms, this project tackles four key questions:

1) What kinds of institutional, economic, electoral and constitutional reforms need to be enacted to advance stable and legitimate democratization?

2) Are there organized constituencies in both regimes and oppositions that can jointly define the "rules of the game" by which reforms will move beyond the boundaries of state-managed liberalization? In short, which liberalized autocracies have actors who have the capacity—and will—to negotiate and implement a legitimate political reform pact?

3) Among the Arab world's expanding club of liberalized autocracies, which are:

• A) Most likely to break with the legacy of liberalized autocracy?
• B) More likely to avoid this task completely?
• C) Most likely to fall into civil strife and conflict as a result of their efforts to breach the boundaries of state-managed liberalization?

What implications do the answers to the above-three questions have for American foreign policy? Can the U.S. afford the risks of backing real and sustained democratization in the Arab world, and if so, where?

To address these and other related questions, USIP has created a working group of leading experts who will analyze the challenge of regime transition in Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, and Yemen. The experts have been chosen for their analytical sophistication, as well as their high level of timely and in-depth knowledge of recent reform experiences in these six countries.

Project Participants

Algeria: Robert Parks, University of Texas, Austin.

Jordan: Ellen Lust-Okar, Yale University

Egypt: Jason Brownlee, Post-Doctoral Scholar, Stanford University

Kuwait: Michael Herb, Georgia State University

Morocco: Guilain Denoeux, Colby College

Yemen: Jillian Schwedler, University of Maryland

Turkey: Henri Barkey, Lehigh Univeristy

Indonesia: William Liddle, Ohio State

Project Questions and Outline

1) In the coming five to ten years, what are the probabilities for a genuine and relatively stable or non-violent transition from state-managed, liberalized autocracy to competitive democracy in your particular country of study?

On a scale of 1 to 10, beginning with highly improbable and ending with highly probable, what are the odds of such a transition unfolding and sustaining itself through at least two competitive elections?

2) What are the primary identity, socio-economic or ideological cleavages in each case? Based on your knowledge of your case's recent experience and present trends, what is the probability that the elites or organizations that speak for these competing interests or identities will define a common strategic (rather than merely tactical) vision of reform that moves beyond state-managed liberalization?

3) From within the state and within the opposition, what are the basic obstacles to -- and opportunities for -- reform?

This question can be approached in this way: Are there constituencies within the state (soft-liners), and within the opposition (moderates), who can agree on the terms of a reform program and thus strengthen their leverage in ways that deflect the efforts of hard-liners to block a move beyond liberalized autocracy? If so, can you envision a legitimate pact, first between society activists in the opposition, and then between these activists and the state? Please be specific about who these constituencies are, i.e. the people who speak for them and the organizations themselves—be them political parties, NGOs, tribal groups, business associations, etc...

4) What kinds of basic political reforms would be necessary to make a transition possible? Please be very specific: are we talking about constitutional reforms?

If so, please outline them. Are we talking about amending electoral and party laws, and if so, what would such amendments look like? Are we talking about getting rid of "emergency laws" or other legal restraints on freedom of speech and assembly? Please do no hesitate to add to this list other particular reforms that you your case might warrant.