Arab Democratization Picks Up Speed

By Michael Collins Dunn

One often hears it said that the wave of democratization which swept Eastern Europe in 1989 and is now showing new strength in sub-Saharan Africa has somehow missed the Arab world. This is far from true: In fact, from the Atlantic to the Gulf, new political dynamics are driving the Arab world, sometimes generated from below, sometimes encouraged by existing governments. Each country has different traditions and problems, so each experience is different (as was the case in Eastern Europe), but a pattern is discernible.

"Democracy," of course, means whatever the commentator wishes it to mean. There is no one standard to apply worldwide. The three oldest major democracies—the US, Britain and France—have very different systems. Americans raised on federalism would find the French system far too centralized, and lacking checks and balances. Yet few would deny that all the major states of Western Europe are democracies today.

Since the self-destruction of Lebanon in the mid-1970s, it has often been said that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. This means that Israel has the only fully realized competitive multiparty elections in the region. This is true, or has been until very recently. Yet Israel's democratic structures do not extend to the inhabitants of the occupied territories. And within Israel proper, the electoral system has placed such extreme emphasis on plurality of parties and breadth of representation that the parties which win the most votes often have to bargain with tiny, one-issue parties (usually religious) in order to form coalitions. In its entire independent history Israel has never had a government which was not a coalition or did not include the religious parties.

As a result, the Orthodox religious establishment, which polls show represents only a minority of Israelis, dominates the civil law. It is a system so intent on maintaining a voice for minorities (excluding the occupied territories) that the minorities have in effect taken the majority captive.

While free multiparty elections have been rare in the Arab world, the region has not been the desert of dictatorships and absolute monarchies which critics often allege. Some countries such as Sudan have long histories of party politics, though they currently languish under military rule. Several, most notably Jordan and Algeria, are moving, in fits and starts, toward genuinely competitive pluralist systems. Others (Tunisia and Egypt, for example) are cautiously feeling their way toward genuine competition. In other states—Mauritania and possibly Kuwait in the near future—internal opposition pressures have pushed the government toward opening up the system.

Such pressures do not just come from liberals seeking to follow Western models. In May, Saudi Arabia's conservative Islamic 'ulama strongly urged political changes in the Kingdom, a critique from the right which may have surprised many outsiders.

The most fertile soil for democratization right now seems to be in the Maghreb.

Several Arab states have a long history of multiple political parties, but in most cases a spotted one. Lebanon's party system really was a reflection of its communal identities. It was not so much a democracy as a balancing act, or a sort of federalism of competing groups. Sudan has gone through a tragic cyclical alternation of democracy and dictatorship, with its political parties finding themselves unable to create stable coalitions and thus inviting military intervention. But several distinct political tendencies have always been visible. Playing major roles have been the Umma Party, the Unionists, the Muslim Brotherhood and, at one time, the Communists.

The most fertile soil for democratization right now seems to be the Maghreb. Algeria's rapid if bumpy march toward democracy has been the process most visible to the West, if only because it has erupted into violent outbreaks. Following the rioting of October 1988, President Chadli Benje did promised a multiparty system and democratic elections, with no major catches. Algeria became the first Arab state formally to legalize a party with an explicitly Islamic "fundamentalist" agenda. That Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), won overwhelming control of major urban municipality councils in last year's elections. But the first parliamentary elections, due June 24, had to be postponed when FIS radicals clashed in the streets with the army.

Algeria is now feeling its way toward elections later this year. Many believe the FIS—whose leaders are now under arrest—chose confrontation because it feared it could not win at the polls. The problem of how a democracy handles a party which may seek to use democratic means to attain power, but which is essentially anti-democratic (FIS's deputy leader has denounced democracy as a Western innovation), is an old one, familiar to the West from the evolution of Communist parties in post-war Europe.

Flags of Caution

Although the crackdown on FIS was accompanied by other steps toward democratization, Algeria's problems have raised caution flags among some of its neighbors. Tunisia's liberalization began a year earlier than Algeria's—in November 1987, when President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali replaced Habib Bourguiba. Unlike Algeria, however, Tunisia has refused to recognize the Al-Nahda Islamic movement as a political party. In 1989, Al-Nahda candidates, running as independents, ran second to the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) and ahead of all the other (legal) opposition parties. More recently, AI-Nahda's leadership split after a violent attack on an RCD office in which a death occurred. Then the government announced the discovery of an Al-Nahda plot to overthrow the government and began a major crackdown.

Following the outbreak of violence, the Tunisian opposition parties (which had been supporting Al-Nahda's right to be recognized) turned against the extremist actions of the Islamist movement and backed the government, while the long-time number two man in Al-Nahda quit and announced he might form a new party of his own. This, the government has hinted, it might recognize. The opposition parties have been rewarded with new government support, including subsidies to begin party publications, which had been beyond their financial means.

Morocco has long had opposition parties and an opposition press, even a legal Communist Party. But it is a monarchy in which Parliament has limited powers. Recently, however, there have been new pressures to give the existing parties some sort of real say in political life. The existence of the parties and a party press already has given a variety of segments of opinion—from Communists through socialists to nationalists, from King's men to Berber groups—a voice of sorts. If the war in the Western Sahara does finally end (a referendum is due late this year), calls for liberalization will be greatly intensified.

Mauritania, which faces severe social divisions between the ruling "Moors" and sub-Saharan Africans of the Senegal Valley, has also announced a liberalization; a new constitution has been approved by voters, calling for a multiparty democracy.

In the eastern Arab world, a multiparty system was created under Anwar Sadat in Egypt in the late 1970s, and was allowed to expand under Hosni Mubarak. The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) still dominates Parliament, but opposition parties have their own newspapers (vigorous and sometimes outrageous) and can attack the government on the floor of the People's Assembly as well. While Egypt formally bans any party based on religion, the Muslim Brotherhood is actually the largest opposition bloc in Parliament, having run candidates under other party banners.

An Evolutionary Stage

Egypt and Tunisia illustrate what seems to be evolving as a stage in the development of democratic institutions in the Arab world. Both have multiple parties and a relatively free press, yet in both cases one single party dominates overwhelmingly. While electoral irregularities may be one reason, another is the traditional power of patronage. In the one-party days of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the single ruling party (which changed names but not real identity) controlled state services and patronage. This continued even when democratization came along. Since the RCD in Tunisia and the NDP in Egypt still have much control over local affairs, village leaders or neighborhood bosses naturally deliver the vote. It is reminiscent of the old American city machines. In both countries, other parties have called on the president to remove himself as leader of the party in order to be a "president of all the people. " Neither president has obliged.

The problem with such systems is that they tend to polarize politics into a party of government, a radical opposition, and an impotent middle. Tunisia's legal opposition parties—about six at last count—have little real clout. Many grew up as centers of personal opposition to Bourguiba and, once he was gone, had little to oppose. In Egypt, the secular opposition parties tend to stake out leftist, Nasserist, or right-wing positions. The New Wafd and Misr Al-Fatat parties are both reincarnations of pre-1952 political parties. The New Wafd still has some grassroots support among those who remember its great days 50 years ago, but most of the opposition parties resemble debating clubs.

In both countries the one opposition force with national appeal and organizing capabilities is the Islamist movement: Al-Nahda in Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood and the more amorphous Islamist groups in Egypt. This model seems to be a frequent one in the Arab world: the ruling party, and the Islamist groups, with a group of rather meaningless, voteless parties in between. Such polarization clearly is not healthy.

Algeria also was moving in this direction, or seemed to be. In last year's elections, despite over a dozen parties in the fray, the FLN and the Islamist FIS virtually split the vote, with only a Berber bloc in some Berber areas showing any other real strength. But Algeria has now turned in a different direction. The new cabinet is non-FLN, and President Chadli Benjedid has quit the FLN. Thus the old ruling party is no longer the party of the president and cabinet (though it still dominates the current Parliament). That is a significant change, the sort which the opposition parties in Tunisia and Egypt have called for in the past.

Tunisia and Egypt are democracies in a sense. But so far, the ruling party never gets turned out of power. In Algeria, however, even that seems possible.

Dramatic Developments in Jordan

Of the more easterly Arab states, the most dramatic democratization has taken place in Jordan, which had a political party system until the 1950s, and a Parliament up until 1967. In 1989, Parliament was restored, and new elections held. At that time political parties remained technically banned, but many "groupings" and "blocs" formed. The Muslim Brotherhood, which had been legal as an educational organization, was able to mount an organized campaign and some 40 percent of the seats went to the Brotherhood and its allies.

At the first of this year, with the Gulf war imminent, King Hussein named a new cabinet which included the Muslim Brotherhood and therefore reflected to some extent the balance of Parliament. In early June, King Hussein signed a National Charter with all the major political tendencies in the country. The charter permits the creation of political parties and a free press. In return, all the political movements, including those on the left which have opposed the monarchy in the past, support the Hashemite throne. In short, Jordan has become something like a constitutional monarchy.

Later in June, reflecting post-war Jordanian diplomacy, King Hussein named another government. The new prime minister, Taher Al-Masri, is a Palestinian and veteran diplomat who headed a liberal bloc in Parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood left the cabinet, because it refused to support the government's backing of the US peace initiative to end the Arab-Israeli conflict.

So Jordan now has a cabinet which reflects the makeup of a Parliament in which the secular parties, from left-of-center to right of-center, are in the cabinet. The religious parties are, for now, the opposition—but a loyal one, under the new National Charter. For a country struggling to deal with the economic disaster which the Gulf war created for it, such a step is a brave one. It has been almost unnoticed, however, by those who were so quick to attack Jordan not long ago.

Elsewhere, the democratic pace has not been so rapid. Iraq's promises of a new constitution and a multiparty system are naturally not going to be applauded until they actually occur. Syria's moves toward opening up society have been few, though economic liberalization has been moving apace.

The traditional monarchies of the Gulf have drawn much attention in the past year. Saudi Arabia has promised to create a shura or advisory council, and in May the conservative Islamic 'ulama urged King Fahd to move ahead on reforms. In Oman, Sultan Qaboos has established a Shura Council already, with local provinces choosing tribal leaders to represent them. It is not a parliament in a Western sense, but it provides the ruler a direct channel to the ruled.

Kuwait, of course, is being watched widely. Alone among the Gulf monarchies, it has a tradition of parliamentary elections and a vigorous press, although the emir dissolved Parliament and restrained the press in 1986. The opposition hopes that the lessons of the occupation and liberation will lead to a restoration of Parliament. The emir has promised fall 1992 parliamentary elections, but this is too far away to suit the opposition.

While some may wish for things to go faster, there is no denying that, even in Kuwait, genuine political movements for democratization are under way. With the world watching—as it has some right to do, having sponsored the liberation of the country—the opposition will work hard to gain ground.

If none of the countries discussed here can yet be called full-fledged democracies, neither could the Western democracies initially. Algeria became the first Arab country to allow any party to run without restrictions, but several Arab countries have multiple parties and, in some cases such as precoup Sudan, the opposition parties had real clout. Whether or not the West is watching, democratization is very much a dynamic force in the Arab world right now. Its friends certainly are gaining more ground than its enemies.

Michael Collins Dunn, Ph.D., is senior analyst of The International Estimate, Inc., a Washington-based consultancy, and Middle East editor of its biweekly newsletter, The Estimate.