The recent events in Tunisia and Egypt have revived interest in the question of why the Middle East has been seemingly resistant to the democratic waves that have swept much of the rest of the world. Starting with Portugal in 1974,and then in many countries of Latin America,these have transformed,most recently,countries of the former Soviet Union and in Africa. (There have been some reversions to autocratic rule,in Russia most notably,and China remains strikingly high and dry.)
Islam is far too often the one-word answer to the question.
We have made this mistake before,of arguing that a country or a region is not democratic because of the religion of its ruling majority community. The Southern Europe (Greece,Spain,Portugal),Eastern Europe and Latin American democracy waves swept away authoritarian regimes in countries that are mainly either Orthodox Christian or,more significantly,Catholic. Scholars as well as politicians and other political activists said that the hierarchical nature of the Catholicism and the powers of the pope was the problem. Many,many US citizens,certainly as recently as during John F. Kennedys election campaign of 1960,saw Catholicism as a serious threat to democracy. Serious
political scientists as late as the 1960s argued that one of the best predictors of whether a country would be democratic was whether its people were Protestant Christians.
How then did all of those Catholic countries become democracies? It is true that the Catholic Church changed in the 1960s,under Pope John XXIII. The Christian Democratic parties of Europe began to shed their explicit religious agendas. Transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy in the next decades were not hindered and in some cases were helped by the Church and its leaders,the same Church that had been willing to partner with pious dictators devoted to an orderly country,albeit brought about through repression. While a few of these countries have become somewhat less democratic in recent years,no one claims that Catholicism is to blame. There are elements of most religions that can be used to justify anti-democratic values,particularly concerning equality and tolerance and there are other elements that can be drawn on to support those and other democratic values.
Another answer to the question of why there are so many Middle East dictatorships is that the US and other Western powers favour them,for strategic reasons or because of oil. It is worth remembering that the US support of dictators did not begin with those of the Middle East. As the most powerful country in the Western hemisphere since the nineteenth century,the US was all too happy to ally with autocratic rulers. As Franklin Roosevelt may or may not have said of Somoza of Nicaragua,in a phrase much quoted recently: he may be a sonofabitch,but hes our sonofabitch. For more than 60 years,since the end of World War II,Free World allies have been,far too often,dictatorships,cynically tolerated if not welcomed and aided as men able to keep the country out of communist (or Islamist) hands. It is hardly unusual to find a US government willing to support dictators like Mubarak for decades,all the while claiming a devotion to democracy. External support goes a long way to explain why authoritarian regimes,like Egypts,survive. And of course the US was not averse to helping install dictatorial regimes all over the world,most notably in Iran in 1953 and Chile in 1973.
More recently,the US and the Europeans have facilitated quite a few democratic transitions,for example in Indonesia,partly out of a genuine commitment to democracy,partly because it is an embarrassment to preach the virtues of freedom while practising alliances of convenience,and partly because of a self-interested calculation that in the long run democracies are more stable,less problematic countries. But even so,as is clear from what is happening in the Middle East now,immediate strategic considerations can trump even perceived long-term interests.
There is no religious reason that condemns countries of the Middle East to continued authoritarian rule,and even the US has probably learned the lesson of the Iraq war,and is now unlikely to use force to restore a fallen ally. A country that manages to install democratic rule,through mobilising its citizenry and recognising the interests of military establishments (and perhaps appealing to their national pride) would undoubtedly be welcomed into the democratic family. Consolidating such a regime is not easy,and there may be relapses. Some particularly oppressive regimes may last much longer,because they can use their oil wealth to buy protection,and buy off their citizens. But,as in Latin America and more recently sub-Saharan Africa,the numbers of not free countries will possibly dwindle to a handful and most of us will be around to see it happen.
Philip Oldenburg is a political scientist at Columbia University,New York
