Scholars debated the definition of democracy and discussed the implications of the controversy for democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East during a panel at Georgetown University on April 24, 2006.
Although many discussions of democracy focus on the political developments occurring in particular countries, the panel addressed a more fundamental question: What does the term democracy mean? Does it entail a strict definition of what a government must look like to be called democratic? Or does it represent a more fluid concept that can be adapted to different local circumstances?
Gerard Alexander, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and associate professor at the University of Virginia, expressed skepticism about the more flexible view of democracy. He traced the history of this idea back to the 1960s, when there were regimes that called themselves democratic despite their obvious lack of adherence to democracy. In the following decades, political scientists proposed proceduralist definitions of democracy that required countries to meet certain criteria to be understood as democratic. However, Alexander pointed to several recent examples of democracy promotion practitioners and policymakers who are departing from this trend and reviving the imagery of heavy adaptation to local conditions.
According to Alexander, democracies can vary in the institutional forms and processes used in a particular country. Democracies can also vary enormously in the types of policies that result from these processes, he said, but all of these adaptations are peripheral to the core definition of democracy. He argued that a regime is not democratic unless it effectively makes officeholders accountable to the citizenry. The mechanisms that deliver accountability include competitive elections, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of leaders to compete for political support, freedom to access alternative sources of information, and the capability of the government to enforce these freedoms. These mechanisms happen to be the core features of Western democracy, Alexander said, but this is because there is no effective democratic alternative to the Western model.
According to Alexander, democracies can vary in the institutional forms and processes used in a particular country. Democracies can also vary enormously in the types of policies that result from these processes, he said, but all of these adaptations are peripheral to the core definition of democracy. He argued that a regime is not democratic unless it effectively makes officeholders accountable to the citizenry. The mechanisms that deliver accountability include competitive elections, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of leaders to compete for political support, freedom to access alternative sources of information, and the capability of the government to enforce these freedoms. These mechanisms happen to be the core features of Western democracy, Alexander said, but this is because there is no effective democratic alternative to the Western model.
While some scholars have argued that these mechanisms can be sustained in virtually all social contexts, Alexander called this idea “deeply naïve” and instead proposed that these mechanisms rely on certain conditions that are not present in every country. He identified three cases in which democracies can fail: polarized societies in which groups would rather fight than lose an election, overpowered states such as rentier states in the Middle East, and underpowered states such as weak or failed states.
For the democracy promotion community, this means that continuing to press for democracy even when conditions are lacking will be ineffective, Alexander said. Their work will be more successful if it aims to promote the underlying conditions required for democratization, he argued.
In contrast, Abdeslam Maghraoui, director of the Muslim World Initiative at the United States Institute of Peace, sharply disagreed with Alexander. Trying to duplicate a precise definition of democracy shows a “lack of imagination,” he said. Instead of attempting to implement a universalist model, it is important to imagine the possibility of diverse patterns of change, different political outcomes, and different forms of accountability, he argued.
The most striking feature of democracy promotion efforts is their lack of sociological imagination, Maghraoui said. For example, the Euro-Mediterranean partnership’s Barcelona Process “produced very limited results” in the area of political reforms because it was based on a flawed assumption that economic growth will lead to political change, and because it was driven by immediate concerns like immigration instead of a long-term commitment to democracy.
U.S. government efforts also suffered from a lack of imagination, he said. U.S. democracy initiatives have been “marred with contradictions” because of their linkage with security concerns. The war on terror requires cooperation with security services that are the backbone of authoritarian regimes, Maghraoui noted, and this assistance undermines political reform. The U.S. should “disassociate democracy from issues of security and stability” because they are contradictory goals, he said.
Several democracy initiatives that have emerged in the Arab world are promising, Maghraoui said, but they do not adequately address important questions such as the role of religion in public life and the process by which these issues will be negotiated. Statements such as the Doha Declaration and the Alexandria Charter discuss the procedural requirement of democracy advocated by Alexander, but they do not go far enough in exploring different processes of democratic change, according to Maghraoui.
Maghraoui suggested that one possible alternative is to “engage Islam, not just Islamists,” to “renew Islamic humanistic values” and encourage reforms in the religious sphere. He cited recent Moroccan reforms in women’s rights, revision of school textbooks, and the formalization of religious authority as successful examples of this approach. While these reforms might not fit the strict definition of democracy, they are substantive measures that can lead to an open, tolerant, and diverse society, he argued. Furthermore, the U.S. government “cannot remain neutral or indifferent” to these types of reforms, Maghraoui said. Moroccans do not want the U.S. to fund these efforts, but U.S. policymakers should support and encourage the reforms, he argued.
The broad, flexible nature of both democracy and Islam present opportunities for alternative interpretations, according to John Voll, the Associate Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Democracy and Islam both have a vast repertoire of concepts and symbols which can be adapted to different circumstances depending upon the mode of operation that you use, he said. The terms and symbols of Islam are “sufficiently broad [so as] to articulate a thoroughly authentically Quranic political philosophy of either authoritarian rule or democracy,” depending on the speaker, he said.
Voll said that his experience of participating in New Hampshire town meetings, where political party identification is rejected, shows that there are many different formats and modes of democratic action. Alexander presented a model of adversary democracy, Voll argued, but there are alternative models such as unitary democracy or Athenian-style democracy. The real challenge is to create governing systems that are democratic in the way they tolerate and manage diversity, he said.
The panel was co-sponsored by the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), Americans for Informed Democracy (AID) and Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS). It was moderated by Jamie Arnett, a M.A. in Arab Studies candidate and Associate in the Project on Middle East Democracy.
“Defining Democracy: Contested Visions of Governance in the Middle East” was the sixth event for POMED, an organization dedicated to examining the impact of U.S. policy on political reform and democratization in the Middle East.
Event Details
Date and Time: September 27, 2007 12:00-2:00pm
Panelists
Geneive Abdo, Century Foundation Fellow and author
Anthony Chang, Deputy Director for the Europe Division of the International Republican Insititute (IRI)
Matthew Frumin, Senior Advisor at the National Democratic Institute
Moderator
Shadi Hamid, POMED Director of Research
Downloads
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