In early November, the Western media was awash with material celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not surprisingly, these echoes had turned into a hollow clang by the time they reached the Arab world. So, are Arabs really incapable of grand transformative change, particularly democratic change, and if so, why?
The question is both fair and beside the point. Everyone will provide a different answer; trying to nail down such a momentous query is unlikely to lead far, raising only more questions. Aligned against those, present company included, who believe that the region is capable of deep democratic change, there are those who will present “culturalist” arguments to the effect that Arab states don’t have the historical baggage required to set up democratic orders.
As their societies have always been autocratic, the argument goes, Arabs are therefore predisposed to autocracy. Others will go further to assert that Islam doesn’t inherently allow for democracy, even though no convincing evidence has ever been presented to justify such a sweeping conclusion.
These opinions are terribly constricting and self-reinforcing. If a society is perceived as being incapable of opening up, of pursuing liberal outcomes, then there is no motivation from their governments, let alone foreign governments, to ever take popular preferences seriously. Yet as East Germany in 1989 showed, as did Lebanon in 2005 and Iran this year, even when presented with small openings, societies under tight control — whether domestic or foreign — will take steps toward emancipation, which, even momentarily, can fundamentally improve their situation.
Unlike the former communist states of Eastern Europe, the Arab world is more complex when it comes to economics. By and large the region’s economies are under the control of the state, or its representatives. Even private sectors, where they exist and even thrive, can in many ways be undermined by rulers and the absence of independent judiciaries.
Yet economics and finance have also been rare areas in the region where regimes have left society some room to maneuver; in most places the notion of a private sector is encouraged, so long as leaders and their acolytes are reserved a cut of state profits and political realities remain unaffected.
But these hybrid economic systems have failed to create more liberal societies. An assumption of numerous Western projects directed at the Arab world has been that the loosening of economic controls might ultimately be mirrored by a loosening of political controls.
This was, for example, a pillar of the Barcelona process set up in the mid-1990s by the European Union. In reality, the link between economic and political openings has been tenuous at best, which is why the political expectations surrounding Barcelona have virtually dissolved, with the process focusing almost exclusively on economic reform.
In that case, what would it take for the Arab world to have its own Berlin Wall moment? Is such a thing even conceivable, particularly given that the region is not held together by a unified intimidating power similar to the Soviet Union’s, where a loosening of the straps at the center could ultimately bring the entire edifice down?
That the George W. Bush administration imagined Iraq’s liberation might be such an event raises hackles today, even if the impact of what happened there has yet to be fully grasped. Grand projects tend to die in the Middle East. Instead, the region seems only to breed stalemate and a sense that nothing will ever change.
But that may not be true. One could easily imagine, for example, that a sudden breakdown of Iran’s autocratic order, which is now devoid of any revolutionary ideological fervor, would send shockwaves through neighboring Arab states. Had post-Saddam Iraq succeeded more quickly (for it will likely emerge from its nightmare stronger), its democratic reverberations could have been more effective than they are; even now, the country’s emerging pluralism deeply worries its neighbors.
In a Middle East where the status quo has prevailed for so long, a sudden swell of change akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall may be more plausible than we think. Arab states will not become freer and more liberal through economic reform. And if change comes, states will not have the benefit of a democratic neighborhood, such as the European Union, to frame their future actions and integrate them into the safety of a liberal, capitalist and multilateral structure.
That’s why if, or when, the Arab wall falls, the consequences may be much direr than those found in Europe two decades ago. The wall may collapse on our heads.
Michael Young
