“If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel” Golda Meir
I have underscored in the previous posts that the interpretation which attributes the authoritarian nature of Middle Eastern regimes to the “intrinsical” nature of Islamic precepts is fallacious and misleading. Rather, the roots are to be found in the tradition of the empires, followed by a period of colonial rule and ultimately by the rise of post-independence regimes that soon acquired deeply authoritarian features. Since a timeline that would go as far as the empires is beyond the scope of this paper, I will focus on how the post-independence regimes delineated the path of the current authoritarian regimes in the Middle East.
As proved in the section that discussed Rule of Law, post-independence regimes replicated the tight control of the colonial rule, both due to practical reasons and because that was the most immediate and convenient model to follow. Therefore, the newly-risen regimes wielded firm control over the educational and judicial systems, the religious establishment and all forms of organized groups. Equally significant, they held monopoly over the terms of public discourse and debate and left no space for the manifestation of opposition. As Roger Owen pointed out, “no regime was prepared to share power with more than a limited number of chosen collaborators, organized opposition was ferociously crushed and all rulers were careful to cultivate an atmosphere of arbitrariness and fear.[1]”
What made possible the exercising of such a firm grip? The answer resides in the dramatic need for rapid development and more equitable distribution of income in the wake of independence. This paved the way for the adoption of a socialist discourse (yet different from the Soviet meaning), with a clear emphasis on the policies of socialist planning. Consequently, regimes in the Middle East “embarked on a statist, integrative program of national development and control” that conferred them an appearance of legitimacy. In its turn, this self-arrogated role of “masters of modernization” justified the strong moves towards power-centralization and interference in the social structure.
Needless to say, the Middle Eastern political and social context has suffered many transformations over the decades. Nonetheless, the authoritarian path initiated after independence grew stronger and stronger. One of the most recent Freedom House researches points to the Middle East as the region with the lowest average score (5.5) in the world in terms of democratic features.[2] Yet while this ranking stands as palpable evidence of the region’s poor show of democratic requirements, the particular Middle Eastern countries have embarked on two quite different types of “trips”.
[1] Roger OWEN, State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, Routledge,London andNew York, 2004, p. 34
[2] Larry DIAMOND et al, Cum se consolideaza democratia, Ed. Polirom,Iasi, 2004, p. 9
