Brookings: Topics - Middle East Youth

How Arab Public Opinion Is Reshaping the Middle East

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 21, 2013
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

The Arab awakening that began in 2011 is transforming the Middle East in ways that continue to surprise seasoned observers. As new political leaders and movements struggle for power and work to shape the region’s future, one thing is clear: public opinion is more consequential now than it has arguably ever been. How Arabs view themselves and the world around them will have enormous consequences for the region and the larger international community in the years ahead. How are changes in Arab public opinion shaping the changes occurring across the region? Have the U.S. and its allies done enough to understand and support the voices of Arabs seeking greater representation and opportunity?

On May 21, the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, as part of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, hosted the launch of The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2013), the latest book by Nonresident Senior Fellow Shibley Telhami. Kim Ghattas, BBC’s State Department correspondent, engaged Dr. Telhami in a discussion of the book and the issues it raises. Martin Indyk, vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings, provided introductory remarks.

Obama's Jerusalem Speech

Martin S. Indyk and Itamar Rabinovich — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's note: In an interview with Charlie Rose, Martin Indyk and Itamar Rabinovich discuss President Obama's recent speech in Jerusalem and prospects for the Middle East peace process. Read an excerpt below.

Charlie Rose: Characterize this speech by the President [Martin Indyk].

Martin Indyk: This speech was typical Obama at his best working his oratorical magic on a crowd that lapped it up. He spoke very convincingly about his commitment to Israel’s security and his understand of their security dilemmas, and particularly underlined he was going to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. But then he went into a riff about peace, and the necessity of peace, and the possibility of peace, and why peace has to be just, even saying; “Put yourself,” you Israelis, “in the shoes of the Palestinians,” and he talked over the heads of the leadership of Israel to say to them “you need to push your leaders, to take risks for peace”

Rose: Basically [Obama] saying; “you [Israel] have to make sacrifices on settlements and other issues in order to get some kind of agreement for Palestinians because that is in fact in the long term interest of your national security.”

Indyk: Exactly. “I care about your security but here is the best way to secure your future…”

Rose: An agreement with the Palestinians…

Indyk: An agreement with the Palestinians.

Rose: that gives them some sense…

Indyk: Two states for two people, he talked specifically about a Jewish state.

Rose: What did you think [Itamar Rabinovich]?

Itamar Rabinovich: I agree. It was a very well crafted, very convincing speech. It was in the heart of the mission to speak to the Israeli public. In a way, President Obama has been doing what President Sadat had done in the late 70’s. He came to Jerusalem before the actual negotiations with Mr.Begin in order to build support for the peace with Egypt at the time, and to enable Mr.Begin to make concessions and win public support. So he was investing public diplomacy in the same way trying to build support in the, or among, the Israeli public for the painful concessions that will have to be made.

Rose: And so how do you think the Prime Minister and his party will take this?

Rabinovich: They would have done, they could have done, without this part of the visit but they had their part of the visit in the first day.

Rose: Which was Iran?

Rabinovich: Well we don’t know what went on behind closed doors. But publically, you know Netanyahu came out weakened, hurt, from the elections and one of the criticisms leveled at him was that he mismanaged the relationship with the United States and here was the President all smiles and friendship and patting each other on the back. That was very good for Mr. Netanyahu, he relished it and he took advantage of it, but this was the first course. The second course is somewhat less tasty for the Prime minister.

Authors

Publication: Charlie Rose

Image Source: © Jason Reed / Reuters

Education and President Obama’s Trip to the Middle East

Maysa Jalbout and Rebecca Winthrop — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:33:00 -0400

In President Obama's visit to the Middle East this week, one aspect that should not be overlooked on his agenda is education in Syria. Education is often not seen as an immediate priority during a conflict, yet is as critical now to Syrian youth and children as it is for the longer-term stabilization and eventual rebuilding of their country. The state of education in Syria is not only a reflection of the current turmoil but, as we have learned from neighboring countries in-post conflict times, especially Iraq, it is also a strong indication of its future.

UNICEF's recent report on the state of education in Syria is alarming. At least 2,400 schools have been destroyed and an additional 1,500 are being used as shelters for displaced persons. In some cities, children have already missed out on almost two years of schooling. Across the country, parents, understandably, are reluctant to send their children to school as school buildings have been targeted by armed forces. Many children fled Syria with their families disrupting their education and forcing them to adjust to new, and often time harsh, conditions. The two years of conflict in Syria has had a severe impact on its education system. If not prioritized now, the consequences could be devastating in the long-term for Syria, as has similarly occurred in Iraq.

Education in pre-war Iraq was arguably one of the best in the region with 100% gross enrollment rates, almost complete gender parity, low drop-out rates, and government spending of approximately $620 per student. Compare that with Iraq during and after the war: gross enrollment dropped, the gender gap increased significantly, the drop out reached 20% and government spending per student dropped to $47. Education continues to be the target of violence and destruction even today. UNESCO reports that going to school in Iraq remains a dangerous activity. In the span of five years (2003-2008), over 31,500 attacks on educational institutions were reported. The impact of the conflict in Iraq on its education system has been devastating and will continue to be felt for generations to come.

For Syria, as in Iraq and in most countries affected by conflict, if education is not prioritized urgently and systematically, we can also expect the same devastating legacy. It will result in less children and youth going to school, fewer years of schooling, lower literacy rates and even worse outcomes for those who were marginalized before the conflict, including girls and women. This Syrian mother's quote in Save the Children's recent report, Childhood Under Fire, depicts the new grim reality:

“My daughter, she is 16 and she loved school. She was the first in her class, and she wanted to become an architect. But this war...we were too worried for her. We could not protect her, so we had to marry her. I know that men are hurting women, old women, single women – everyone. We needed her to have a protector…What about marriage? ‘Your cousin is a good man, take him, he is good.’ So she said ‘As you wish’. But she did not want to get married, she wanted to study. But there were no more schools. So... she was married. This is happening a lot within Syria, many women I know are marrying their daughters – even younger than 16 – to protect them.”

If Syria’s post-conflict education system is left to follow in the same path as Iraq’s, it will not only exacerbate state fragility, but also obstruct development and hurt those who are most vulnerable. This 16-year-old Syrian girl's story could become the story of an entire generation of young women who lose the chance to be educated, to be empowered and to have the tools they need to participate in the rebuilding of their country.

The United States government could lead the way in supporting an education relief plan and a longer-term multi-stakeholder rehabilitation plan of the sector as a whole. It should begin by funding UNICEF's $20 million ask for education programs in Syria for which it has only received $3 million so far. Proven strategies for ensuring continuity of education amid crisis, such as setting up child friendly spaces for learning in homes and other safe spaces, are important not only for children’s learning outcomes but their psychosocial well-being. Funding shortfalls are preventing the provision of urgently needed prefabricated classrooms, repairs and rehabilitation of learning spaces, and the provision of learning materials. For Syrians who fled to neighboring countries, targeted support should be given to U.N. agencies and particularly to Jordan, where over 29,000 Syrian children have been given access to schools despite Jordan’s own schools being already overcrowded and burdened by previous flows of refugees.

To stop at the urgent needs of Syria's education system however, would be short sighted. Supporting Syria's education needs over the long term is a must. As President Obama and his administration consider the future of Syria, they must ensure that the legacy of Syria’s conflict is not another broken education system and its devastating consequences for Syria, the Middle East and the world.

Authors

Image Source: © Stringer . / Reuters

Arab Spring Countries: Beyond Political Upheaval and toward Inclusive Growth

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:00:00 -0500

Event Information

January 31, 2013
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EST

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

Two years after the revolutions that changed the political landscape of the Arab world, countries in the region are still struggling to address the core political and socioeconomic issues behind the protests. Political unrest and an unfavorable international environment have led to economic stagnation and heightened short-term macro-economic risks. Little progress has been made toward achieving the revolutions’ objectives of better lives and social justice. In a series of papers, scholars from Brookings and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) address how these countries can move beyond the political upheaval and support economic and social development.

On January 31, Global Economy and Development at Brookings hosted a discussion on how post-Arab Spring countries can move toward more inclusive growth. Brookings Senior Fellow Hafez Ghanem presented the overall recommendations from the papers and a group of experts discussed their thoughts on the papers and the broader issues. Panelists included: Inger Andersen, vice president of the Middle East and North Africa region at the World Bank; Andrew Baukol, deputy assistant secretary for Middle East and Africa at the U.S. Treasury; Heidi Crebo-Rediker, chief economist at the U.S. State Department; and Akihiko Koenuma, director-general of the Middle East and Europe Department at JICA. Vice President Kemal Derviş, director of Global Economy and Development, moderated the discussion.

Audio

Arab Spring Countries: Beyond Political Upheaval and toward Inclusive Growth

Transcript

Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20130131_Arab_spring_countries_uncorrected_transcript

After the Spring: Inclusive Growth in the Arab World

Hafez Ghanem — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:47:00 -0500

The revolutions that swept through the Arab world two years ago have socio-economic as well as political roots. The end of decades-long autocratic rule in Egypt and Tunisia represented the population’s ardent wish for political, social and economic change, and many were hopeful it meant progress was imminent. However, almost two years later, we continue to see Egypt plagued by violent protests, with critics arguing President Morsi is a new form of authoritarianism that disregards the judiciary and continues Mubarak’s reign of social injustice. In Tunisia, unemployment has risen from 14 to 19 percent and few real advances in economic and social development have been seen in other Middle East and North African countries racked by unrest. The populations that fed the Arab Spring movement feel betrayed and argue the purpose behind their protests have yet to be realized. As a consequence Arab governments and their development partners need to adjust their economic policies and assistance programs to respond to the demands for inclusive growth and social justice. Failure to do so could jeopardize the transition to democracy and lead to continued unrest and instability.

This is the overarching message of five papers on the Arab economies that have been recently published as part of a collaboration between Brookings and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). After making the case for a change toward more inclusive growth patterns, these country-focused papers cover three important dimensions of inclusive development in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Iraq: (1) economic opportunities for youth, (2) education, and (3) voice and good governance.

Later this week, we will be discussing the themes and policy recommendations of these papers as well as ongoing issues in Egypt and other Arab Spring countries at an upcoming public event at Brookings. Below is a summary of the major themes of the papers.

Economic Opportunities for Youth

Young men and women led the revolutions of the Arab Spring. Nearly 55 percent of the Arab population is under the age of 25 and two-thirds are under the age of 30. Hence, creating opportunities for the millions of young people who are entering the job market every year is a major economic challenge for post-revolution governments. Youth unemployment in the Arab world is among the highest in the world, and joblessness is a particularly serious problem for educated youth and for young women (female labor force participation rates are only around 25 percent). In Egypt youth with secondary education and above represent about 95 percent of the unemployed, and in Tunisia the unemployment rate for university graduates is nearly 30 percent.

The small enterprise sector is a major employer in most Arab countries. It is growing at about 5 percent a year in Tunisia and thus providing the majority of new jobs. In Egypt about 72 percent of new entrants to the labor market end up working in small and micro enterprises. Therefore, it seems that encouraging youth entrepreneurship and the development of small businesses, so that they can create better paying jobs, have to be key objectives of any inclusive growth strategy in the Arab world. It is the subject of two papers that use Egypt and Tunisia as case studies.

The Egypt case study uses enterprise surveys from 2003, 2008, 2010 and 2011 to describe the Egyptian micro and small enterprise (MSE) sector and identify key obstacles to its development. It argues that the objective of government policy and donor interventions should not be simply to support the growth of the existing small enterprise sector that is characterized by low productivity (average wage for males is $3.70 a day and for females $2.60 a day) and low market access (99 percent of MSEs service local markets with no access to national or international markets). The aim should be to raise the sector’s productivity and its linkages to domestic and international markets, and to support its modernization so that it can become more dynamic, providing better living standards for young entrepreneurs and decent jobs for new entrants to the labor market. Programs to support MSEs have focused on providing financing. However, the key constraints facing the sector are probably access to technology and markets. The paper concludes by proposing a two-pronged strategy for the expansion and modernization of the MSE sector: a macroeconomic and regulatory environment that is conducive to the development of MSEs, and specific interventions to support the sector and encourage youth entrepreneurship.

The Tunisia case study analyses trends in youth employment and unemployment in private sector development, with special attention to education and female employment. It uses data from a 2007 enterprise survey to study the evolution of the MSE sector and argues that Tunisian MSEs are suffering from similar problems faced by the private sector generally. The business environment has been plagued with corruption and many other imperfections and uncertainties, and was not conducive for substantial investment and enterprise creation. Small entrepreneurs, who are not well-connected to the old political elite, have been particularly hurt by the lack of clear rules and by rampant corruption. The paper argues for reforms of labor laws and of the financial sector in order to encourage MSEs to become formal and gain better access to credit. It also points out huge inequalities between different regions in Tunisia (the poverty rate in the center west region is three times that in Tunis) and to a strong gender bias in the labor market (female labor market participation rate is 27 percent compared to 70 percent for males), and argues for special policies and programs to deal with them.

Education

Youth unemployment and lack of entrepreneurship can be partly explained by weak education systems. Arab countries’ public spending on education is relatively high (measured as a percentage of GDP), but the results are unsatisfactory. Arab education systems perform poorly on three important dimensions: equity, relevance and quality of learning. In some countries, such as Yemen and Morocco, equity of access remains a particular issue for girls. In all countries there is a mismatch between what is taught in schools and universities, and the demands of the labor market. Moreover, these inadequate curricula are not effectively transmitted to students. The quality of education is poor. All of the 13 Arab countries that participated in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS) scored below the scale average of 500 in 2007.

One of the research papers looks at the issue of the quality of education, using Yemen as an example. It uses micro-data from TIMSS and from surveys conducted in underserved rural areas, as well as macro-level policy information from the “System Assessment for Better Education Results” (SABER) database. The analysis indicates that the availability of teachers and resources at schools, the monitoring and supervision of schools, and parental involvement in schooling are important factors for better learning outcomes and avoiding trade-offs between expansion of enrollment and quality of learning. The paper suggests three types of reforms that can be carried out in the short run. First, it is necessary to systematically monitor teachers’ actual deployment and attendance in order to link the information with salary management and incentives. Second, there is a need to refine and scale up the existing implementation and monitoring mechanism for school grants to reward schools and communities that improve access for disadvantaged students and girls, and enhance the quality of learning. Third, there is a need to enhance transparency and accountability of school resources and results by disseminating a simple database that would include trends of basic indicators to monitor and compare progress at the school, district and governorate level.

Voice, Participation and Good Governance

Implementing inclusive growth policies requires changes in the way governments operate. Arab countries lag behind the rest of the world on nearly all governance indicators, particularly those related to voice and participation. Together with a lack of transparency and low accountability, this has led to greater corruption and the emergence of the soft state. A sense of alienation and exclusion, especially among youth, contributed to popular dissatisfaction that remains unsolved after the revolution. That is why one of the research papers focuses on ways to improve participation in policymaking and economic planning, and to provide a guiding vision to recover from the crisis after the revolution, using Egypt as an example. The paper reviews the experiences of Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia, which indicate the importance of achieving a national consensus on an economic vision for the future, and the policies and programs needed to achieve it. Successful East Asian countries have put in place consultative processes (including different government departments, the private sector and civil society) to agree on national development plans and monitor their execution. The situation has been very different in Egypt where an institutional coordination mechanism among the various stakeholders to build a national vision was missing. The research paper adapts the experiences of East Asia to Egypt’s situation, and presents a proposal for introducing the concept of “inclusive planning” in economic planning and policymaking.

The last research paper addresses the question of how donors can remain engaged and support governments implementing democratic reforms. Countries in transition often go through periods of serious unrest, upheaval and weak governance. Yemen and Iraq are examples. Usually donor agencies hesitate to increase their support as they face two key problems in post-conflict or post-revolution situations: (1) high security risk for transparent implementation; and (2) poor government effectiveness, marred by corruption, ethnic tensions and economic malaise. But this is precisely the time when donor engagement is needed most. By using the experience of JICA projects in Iraq, the paper argues that donors should not withdraw their support in difficult post-conflict situations. It proposes three mechanisms – information; social recognition; and mediation – to solve such difficulties in a post-conflict society. The empirical analysis shows that more intensive feedback especially leads to a positive impact even in war-torn Iraq.

Authors

Hafez Ghanem

Image Source: © Amr Dalsh / Reuters

The Role of Micro and Small Enterprises in Egypt's Economic Transition

Hafez Ghanem — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:36:00 -0500

The success of Egypt’s transition to democracy will depend crucially on the ability of the democratically elected leadership to develop and implement a new economic vision that responds to the aspirations of the millions of youth who have so far been marginalized. Future growth needs to be much more inclusive than in the past. Therefore, encouraging youth entrepreneurship and the development of small businesses have to be central to any new growth strategy.

This paper focuses on the economic aspects of Egypt’s transition. It argues that while past economic policies (especially starting in 2004) achieved high growth and poverty reduction, they failed to be inclusive as they left millions of Egyptians trapped in lower middle-class status living on $2 to $4 a day and provided few opportunities for youth who felt economically and socially excluded. There was an increasing sense that the system was "unfair," which explains the strong demands for social justice. Inclusive growth could be achieved by shifting away from a system of crony capitalism that favored large and established enterprises to one that focuses on developing small businesses and on creating more opportunities for young men and women. The paper uses enterprise surveys from 2003, 2008, 2010 and 2011 to describe the Egyptian micro and small enterprise (MSE) sector and identify key obstacles to its development. It concludes by proposing a two-pronged strategy for the expansion and modernization of the MSE sector: a macroeconomic and regulatory environment that is conducive to the development of MSEs, and specific interventions to support the sector and encourage young entrepreneurs.

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Authors

Hafez Ghanem

Image Source: © Amr Dalsh / Reuters

Youth Employment and Economic Transition in Tunisia

Mongi Boughzala — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:36:00 -0500

This paper analyzes trends in youth employment and unemployment in private sector development, with special attention to education and female employment. It uses data from a 2007 enterprise survey to study the evolution of the MSE sector and that Tunisian MSEs are suffering from similar problems faced by the private sector generally. The business environment has been plagued with corruption and many other imperfections and uncertainties, and was not conducive for substantial investment and enterprise creation. Small entrepreneurs, who are not well-connected to the old political elite, have been particularly hurt by the lack of clear rules and by rampant corruption. The paper argues for reforms of labor laws and of the financial sector in order to encourage MSEs to become formal and gain better access to credit. It also points out to huge inequalities between different regions in Tunisia (the poverty rate in the center west region is three times that in Tunis) and to a strong gender bias in the labor market (female labor market participation rate is 27 percent compared to 70 percent for males), and argues for special policies and programs to deal with them.

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Authors

Mongi Boughzala

Image Source: © Zoubeir Souissi / Reuters

Demand for Arab "Strongmen" Weaker Than Ever

Bessma Momani — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 13:17:00 -0500

As we mark the two-year anniversary of the Arab uprisings, we see plenty of figurative post-mortems on the Arab leaders, or strongmen, that have been usurped by the masses. But what can we learn from these revolutions about the Arab people and the type of government they seek? How do these uprisings complicate the theory of “Arab exceptionalism” (as it was once described in polite academic and analytical circles)? This term, I’m afraid, was not intended as a compliment: Many analysts of the Middle East talked about how the Arab world was “exceptional” to the experience of democratization – and, implicitly, to modernization – thanks to resilient authoritarian political structures. In other words, Arabs were really good at constructing systems that revolved around security institutions, and that relied on nepotism and cultish adoration of the leader by the masses to surive.

I have never found this argument helpful in explaining the politics of the region, not least because it typically descended into cultural arguments about how the Arab people want strongmen, respect the abuser, or simply view “might as right.” It is an academic theory that has always been too reminiscent of cultural psychologist Raphael Patai’s 1973 book, The Arab Mind, which provided lessons on how to dominate the Arab people, and implied that such lessons were legitimated by the behaviour of Arabs themselves. When Seymour Hersh wrote his exposé in The New Yorker about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, he noted that Patai’s book was the inspiration behind the Bush neo-conservatives’ modus operandi for containing the Arab people. The book, like Abu Ghraib, is a reminder of how the Arab people have been dehumanized as they’ve been poked and prodded by outside analysts.

So, what does this theory that the Arab people want strongmen have to do with the Arab Spring?

In my opinion, the Arab Spring has debunked this theory once and for all, as Arabs have shown the world they are looking for the complete opposite of strongmen. The uprisings were devoid of charismatic leaders, and none have captured the imagination of the various revolutions thus far. Indeed, the international community has at times made loud calls for the revolutionary groups to find leaders so external powers would have interlocutors.

Frankly, the Arab people are not searching for new larger-than-life leaders. They are not looking for someone to take to the podium and rhyme off speeches that try to restore confidence with rhetoric and empty promises. Arabs do not want to pay deference to strongmen, real or perceived – they are fed up with omnipotent leaders. So, when Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi gave his speech to the nation, and when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stood in front of the Damascus Opera House to give his statesmen a lesson in geopolitics, they were out of sync entirely with the dynamic of the revolutions.

Today, the people of the Arab world want technocrats, functionaries, and doers to lead them. Long-winded speeches and convoluted ideological arguments are not satisfying to a class of educated, well-traveled, and increasingly cosmopolitan people. Greater and greater numbers of Arabs are calling on leaders to effectively formulate and implement policies – they want reforms in every sense of the word. Fiery nationalist speeches that may have been enough to spark hope in days past now only fan feelings of frustration.

In many ways, this is the reason for the Arab uprisings: It is a process resulting from the increased education, urbanization, and empowerment of the Arab people. It is hard to tell a generation of young, educated people that because someone else commands the megaphone and has a stick to back it, they ought to acquiesce. The actions of this generation disprove any thesis that Arab societies are predisposed to dictatorship and stagnation. The Arab Spring should put an end to “Arab exceptionalism”, and to the idea that we are merely waiting for alternative Arab strongmen to replace the ones that have been forced out.

Authors

Bessma Momani

Publication: Canada International Council

Image Source: © Ahmed Jadallah / Reuters

After the Spring: Achieving Inclusive Growth in the Arab World

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 12:30:00 -0400

Event Information

October 15, 2012
12:30 PM - 4:30 PM EDT

Tower Hall
Roppongi Hills Mori Tower 49F
Tokyo

What is the state of the Arab world nearly two years after the start of the revolutions? What role can donors play to support a successful transition to democracy? These were two of the questions debated at an October 15 workshop organized jointly by the Agence Francaise de Développement (AFD), the Japan International Development Agency (JICA) and the Brookings Institution. The workshop took place in Tokyo after the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and was attended by a large number of senior representatives from Arab countries and the international community.

Mr. Ashraf El-Araby, the Egyptian minister of planning and international cooperation, summarized many of the many conclusions of the seminar in his remarks. He stated that improving the Arab world’s social situation is a major concern and that more projects that create jobs, particularly for young people, were needed. He noted that donors can also help in setting up social safety nets and social insurance schemes and stressed the importance of small and medium enterprises for employment and shared growth. Also, he explained how his government is working to improve the overall business environment of Egypt, paying particular attention to regulations affecting small businesses while also acknowledging that the Arab Spring countries are facing huge challenges on many fronts and need to work with development partners to enhance their institutional capacities.

Event Materials

1115 joint research interim outputs

Participants

Panelists

The Information Revolution: Democracy and Legitimacy in the 21st Century

Mon, 21 May 2012 18:30:00 -0400

Event Information

May 21, 2012
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM EDT

Brookings Doha Center, Doha, Qatar

On May 21, 2012, the Brookings Doha Center hosted a policy discussion with the Rt. Hon. David Miliband, Member of Parliament and former Foreign Secretary of the UK, and Wadah Khanfar, Co-founder al Sharq Forum and former Director General of Al Jazeera. The debate focused on the roles of both old and new media in the recent uprisings across the Middle East, as well as the sources of legitimacy emerging as leaders around the world face challenges to their power. The panel discussion, which was followed by a question and answer session, was moderated by Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center, and attended by members of Qatar’s academic, business, diplomatic, and media communities.

Salman Shaikh began the discussion by asking David Miliband what the new sources of legitimacy are in a world where governments are increasingly being challenged on the ground and through new media. Miliband cited four sources of legitimacy, adding one to the three identified by Max Weber. They were: state-building; historical legitimacy or lineage; a democratic mandate, buttressed by institutions that keep others in check; and finally the state’s efficiency in delivering services to its citizens. Miliband recognized that some states score higher or lower in the four different areas of legitimacy. Europe, for example, has traditionally benefitted from a high degree of democratic legitimacy yet is increasingly earning lower marks for its efficacy in providing for citizens. There are different balances across the Middle East, he stated, where legitimacy is secured through state-building, theocracy, and the delivery of services, but rarely through a democratic mandate. In addition, Miliband cited the newly significant component of international legitimacy, articulated through an emphasis either on national sovereignty or international law. A mismatch between strong international legitimacy, in the absence of other sources such as the delivery of services, he stated, could inform understandings of the Greek and Italian crises.

Khanfar agreed with Miliband on the sources of legitimacy yet pointed out that “the Middle East has never had proper nation states.” He went on to say that the region has been suffering from a legitimacy deficit since World War I. The Middle East is now facing a crisis of legitimacy, as states’ borders have been defined not by national interest, historical legitimacy, or tribal borders, but by foreign powers. Today, then, we are seeing the first free debate in the Middle East about the concept of legitimacy, and the very definitions of these states are in question. Major questions will be asked, Khanfar said, about whether the region can survive as 22 independent nation states.

Khanfar said Islam will inevitably constitute an important part of the debate about the formation of the state and the definition of its legitimacy. Islam in the Middle is seen not as a religion but as “a way of life,” he said. A deep suspicion of the concept of democracy in the region – largely the result of authoritarian regimes using it to garner support and prop up their rule – means that it will need to be reinterpreted in an Islamic conception. Islamic notions of democracy and leadership should be redefined in the new context to provide governments with constitutional legitimacy. More broadly, in Khanfar’s view, religion needs to be separated from the state. Modernization, he explained, “made Islam a toy in the hands of politicians.” For that reason, he argued, religion needs to be liberated from the hegemony of the state; society, not the state, should be entrusted with religion, he said.

In response to a question from Miliband about whether in the Arab world the bar for establishing legitimate rule has been raised in the aftermath of the recent uprisings, Khanfar responded that expectations for leaders have increased over the past few years. Social networks, he stated, provided a generation of youth with “a new imagination of politics” and allowed them to create “a virtual democratic zone.” Social networks are by their nature democratic, Khanfar argued, as everyone joins on equal footing. In this arena – which will become an integral part of mainstream media in the coming years – it is possible to unite people through ideas rather than social class or tribe. This was crucial in instigating the revolutions in the Arab world, Khanfar argued. He warned, however, that the spirit of the revolution is not being carried forward in the countries in transition, as elections have brought to power traditional political actors. He expressed the need to “inject the political system with the spirit of Tahrir,” so that it does not resort to partisanship, which may lead to more traditional sectarian or tribal politics. Miliband pointed out that people are increasingly able not only to share their own opinions but also to compare public statements and private actions. The increased ability of citizens to reveal governmental hypocrisies – one of the greatest sources of illegitimacy – makes them better equipped to challenge their leaders.

Shaikh next posed the question of whether media can become too intrusive, or obstruct effective governance. Miliband answered that media is “a very blunt tool.” Yet as increasing amounts of information are available to ever more people, autocratic rulers will be unable to stop that flow, and the bar for establishing legitimacy will be raised. Khanfar added that the media are allowing people in the Middle East to become much more informed than in past decades, enabling them to judge politicians’ actions. The “wisdom of the crowd,” he said, can be trusted. People in the region have regained their dignity and feel able and proud to participate in politics, he said.

On a note of warning, Miliband pointed out that “government by the people” is as important as “government for the people” arguing that that mob rule remains a danger. “The lesson from history,” he explained, “is that all power has to be checked by independent institutions.” He also compared Khanfar’s description of Middle Easterners proud to vote, with citizens of gridlocked Western democratic systems. “The paradox of democracy,” he said, “is that where it exists it is in disrepute.”

Shaikh next asked Miliband what he has thus far learned from the Arab Awakenings. Miliband cited four lessons: the importance of having faith in the ability of people to assert themselves; the cross-generational aspect of the uprisings; the willingness of parties, when in power, to compromise; and the tendency of the nation-building process to turn countries inward. On the last point, he warned that such internal focus is dangerous, stating that the Palestinian plight is not being given sufficient attention in the current climate. Nations of the region need to act together and should therefore foster ties among themselves, he said.

In answer to a question about what the Middle East can learn from Western democracies, Khanfar answered that mature democracies have developed shared values and common interests that the Middle East lacks. For the first time, he said, the Middle East is being given the chance to define the interests of the state. Responding to Miliband’s comments, Khanfar noted that the priorities of the region are well understood by the public. At this time, he said, Palestine is not considered as pressing an issue as other internal concerns. Nonetheless the debate on Palestine will continue, as it is “part of the DNA of public opinion.” Ultimately, Khanfar explained, states of the Middle East need to get their houses in order before facing the Palestinian issue.

Following the panel debate, the question and answer session covered a range of issues, including the role of youth in the post-Arab Spring Middle East and the role of Islamist parties in Arab states. Gilles Kepel opened the session by asking whether Wadah Khanfar still considered Al Jazeera to be a key player in the revolution, arguing that nationally-based mainstream media were playing a much larger role since the onset of the revolutions. He also wondered whether Al Jazeera needs to adapt, as new local channels are emerging around the region. Khanfar answered that the spirit and mission of Al Jazeera have succeeded in spreading throughout the Middle East, explaining that the network has never viewed itself as competing for dominance. Indeed, Al Jazeera always endeavored to give people a voice, Khanfar said, and many of the new channels were inspired by Al Jazeera’s mission. Still, he cautioned, the region’s media landscape has not yet reached maturity, and much needs to be done to ensure access to credible news sources that are not tainted by partisanship. Moving forward, Al Jazeera plans to move into a second phase of influence by creating departments focused on new media.

Another question concerned whether David Miliband saw any recent examples of hypocrisy in Western foreign policy toward the Arab world. Miliband said that over the years, the durability of the Middle Eastern autocracies lulled Western governments into a “routinization” of their foreign policies. As a result, questions were not asked about the internal dynamics of regional players. It is important to take into account that governments can never achieve everything they hope to, he said. Furthermore, in last 18 months, Miliband stated, we have seen that it is internal rather than external opposition that ultimately succeeds in toppling regimes, aside from the Libyan exception.

Khanfar also addressed this point, placing the burden of reform on national governments. As for monarchies such as Jordan, he said, they can either assume they are safe from revolt or take the necessary steps to make their regimes more open. In his view, Morocco has taken measures to appease citizens’ demands, with its leadership recognizing the difficulty of challenging popular pressure for greater representation. Governments need to make reforms, Khanfar said, “nothing can survive in front of the Arab Spring.”

The following question concerned how the Middle East’s new democracies can and should protect women and minority rights. Khanfar answered that an organic methodology of addressing these issues should be developed, as women and minorities had for decades been discussed primarily through a Western prism. He said the status of women has improved “more in the past two years than over the past 20,” citing the example of Yemeni women leading demonstrations in conservative Sanaa. Khanfar described a “new momentum in our societies” that will allow for more change than has been seen in the past. Khanfar also made the point that the notions of minority and majority are not in the Middle Eastern lexicon, as the region is “a mosaic of different groups.” With the arrival of the modern state, he stressed, we have the opportunity to include minorities in the mainstream to eliminate sectarian, ethnic, and other divisions in the minds of the region.

Another question concerned what many considered to be Al Jazeera’s uneven coverage of the uprising in Bahrain. Khanfar answered that the Bahraini crisis came at the time of other revolutions and so was not as highly prioritized as coverage of the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. Nonetheless, he stated, the Bahraini opposition had direct access to Al Jazeera until correspondents were expelled from the country. Khanfar explained that the network had nonetheless maintained coverage, sometimes through undercover reporting. Despite efforts to cover the ongoing events Khanfar said, “we were criticized by both parties;” the opposition felt that Bahrain did not get as much coverage as other countries, while the Bahraini government believed Al Jazeera gave the uprising undue attention.

A final question concerned whether new media will make it impossible for politicians to respond to citizens’ grievances. Miliband responded that media is a symptom, not a cause, of people’s grievances. He said that 24-hour media is making the electorate better educated about a variety of domestic and global issues. Still, it is important not to overestimate the power of media. Where there is a cacophony of voices, the danger is not media domination, but rather fragmentation, he said. As populations become more aware they will be more able to process information independently; “the critical mind is the essence of democracy,” he said.

Event Materials

21 information revolution milliband

Participants

Moderator

Salman Shaikh

Director, Brookings Doha Center
Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

Panelists

Wadah Khanfar

Rt Hon David Miliband, MP

Islamist Politics in Turkey: The New Model?

Ömer Taşpınar — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: The following is a chapter written by Ömer Taşpınar from the book, The Islamists Are Coming: Who They Really Are, co-published by the Wilson Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace.

In the twenty-first century, Turkey is arguably the most dynamic experiment with political Islam among the fifty-seven nations of the Muslim world. It also offers seminal lessons for the Arab world, despite the tense history (especially during the Ottoman Empire) and many differences.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) went through five incarnations before it found a balance that voters would embrace but the military would also accept, albeit reluctantly. Its evolution reflects how democratic traditions and institutions can both interact with and moderate political Islam, at least in one geostrategic country. In Turkey, a tradition of free and fair elections and capitalism has encouraged Islamic parties to play by the rules. Turkey’s radical secularism, enforced by the military, has also tamed the strident religious dogma that once landed Islamic politicians in trouble—and even in prison.

The AKP is a political party with clear Islamic roots. It pragmatically moved to the center-right over a decade, mainly to escape the fate of its defunct predecessors. The party’s success, however, has had little to do with ideological factors. Turkish voters have been primarily concerned with bread-and-butter issues. In June 2011, they once again voted for political stability and rewarded Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the country’s growing prosperity and better social services, particularly in health care and housing.

The victory for the AKP was historic. It was only the second time since the beginning of Turkey’s multiparty democracy in 1946 that a political party had won three consecutive elections. And it was the first time that a party actually increased its percentage of the vote at each succeeding election. The AKP received 34.28 percent of the vote in 2002. It won 46.58 percent in 2007. And it scored 49.90 percent in 2011.

It was a striking reversal. All previous Islamist parties in Turkey had been shut down by either military intervention or rulings by the constitutional court: The National Order Party, founded in 1970, was banned by the Constitutional Court in 1971. The National Salvation Party, founded in 1972, was outlawed after the 1980 military coup. The Welfare Party, founded in 1983, was banned by the Constitutional Court in 1998. The Virtue Party, founded in 1997, was banned in 2001.

Turkey is notable because its Islamist parties have reemerged, more moderate and pragmatic, after each closure. “Autocratic regimes in the Muslim world often ban religious parties, which then go underground and turn violent. Turkey’s Islamists have taken a different path. Despite being repeatedly outlawed and ejected from power, pious politicians have shunned violence, embraced democracy, and moved into the mainstream,” The Economist noted in 2008. “No Islamic party has been as moderate and pro-Western as the AKP, which catapulted into government in 2002 promising to lead Turkey into the European Union.”

Erdoğan, who founded the party, actually rejects defining the AKP in religious terms. “We are not an Islamic party, and we also refuse labels such as Muslim-democrat,” he said in 2005. The AKP leader instead calls the party’s agenda “conservative democracy.”

The AKP’s journey from political Islam to conservative democracy is not just the result of political expediency or respect for the red lines of Turkish secularism. The evolution of Turkey’s capitalism under the leadership of Turgut Özal in the 1980s created an entrepreneurial Muslim bourgeoisie in the conservative heartland of Anatolia. The new Muslim bourgeoisie had a greater stake in politics—and became more engaged.

These “Islamic Calvinists” have been more concerned about maximizing profits, creating access to international currency markets, and ensuring political stability than about introducing Islamic law or creating a theocracy. Turkey now has thousands of such small and medium-sized export-oriented businesses, often referred to as “Anatolian tigers.” Most support the AKP. Beginning in the 1990s, the party’s assumption of political power gradually moderated the radical elements within Turkish political Islam.

The AKP leadership clearly views the party as a model for other Muslim countries. On June 12, 2011, Erdoğan told thousands who had gathered to celebrate the AKP’s landslide victory, “Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul. Beirut won as much as Izmir. Damascus won as much as Ankara. Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, [and] Jerusalem won as much as Diyarbakir.”

The Beginning

The rise of Islamic politics in Turkey was in large part a reaction to the traumatic birth of a modern state after the Ottoman Empire collapsed following World War I. Since the 1920s, Turkey’s official ideology has been Kemalism, which grew out of the ultrasecular views of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. The Kemalists pursued a top-down project of radical modernization. In an ambitious drive to import European civilization, the republic disposed of the governing caliphate, the Arabic alphabet, Islamic education, and the Sufi brotherhoods that were an important part of both religion and culture.

Kemalist Turkey adopted Western legal codes from Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, together with the Latin alphabet and the Western calendar, Western holidays, and Western dress. The country’s official history and language were reworked. A new education system glorified pre-Islamic Turkic civilizations at the expense of the country’s more recent Ottoman past, and many Arabic and Persian words were purged to create an “authentically” Turkish vocabulary. Even the Arabic azan, the call to prayer, was no longer allowed in its original form and had to be chanted in modern Turkish, to the dismay of pious Muslims.

Yet despite massive reforms, secular Kemalism barely infiltrated Turkish society at large. The rural and pious masses of Anatolia remained largely unaffected by the cultural reengineering in Ankara, in contrast to the military, the bureaucracy, and the urban bourgeoisie, who embraced or adapted to Kemalism’s superficial Westernization. The cultural gap between the Kemalist center and the Anatolian periphery soon became insurmountable. A Kemalist slogan in the 1920s acknowledged that the Turkish government ruled “For the people, despite the people.”

Religious conservatives and ethnic Kurds actively opposed the Kemalist mission to create a Westernized, secular, and homogenous Turkish nation-state. Between 1923 and 1938, the new Kemalist government unleashed its military to suppress a series of Kurdish and Islamist rebellions.

Turkish politics entered a new era after 1946. When the Cold War divided up the world, Turkey’s decision to turn toward the West and join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) fostered a transition to multiparty democracy—and a realignment of political forces between left and right. Kurdish discontent found its place in the socialist left, while political Islam was part of the anticommunist right. Behind the scenes, the military remained a powerful force. It intervened in 1960, 1971, and 1980 to restore a sense of Kemalist order against both leftist and conservative parties.

But in 1991, after the Cold War ended and communism collapsed, Turkey’s identity problems rapidly resurfaced. The right and left were no longer able to absorb the passions of Kurdish and Islamic dissent. Turkey was polarized along two axes: Turkish versus Kurdish identity on the one hand, and Islamic versus secular identity on the other. The result was the “lost decade” of the 1990s—a decade of war with Kurdish separatists, polarization over the role of religious values, economic turmoil, and unstable coalition governments.

Islamist Victories

In 1994, the Welfare Party—the third incarnation of the pro-Islamist Party—shocked the Kemalist establishment by winning local elections nationwide and capturing control of Turkey’s two largest cities, Istanbul and Ankara. The party was headed by Necmettin Erbakan, who had close connections with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. After seven decades, Turkey’s secular tide was ebbing. A year later, the Welfare Party won the largest bloc in parliamentary elections, putting an Islamist-led coalition in charge of the entire country.

The Welfare Party’s victory was short lived. Alarmed that the new government would adopt an overtly Islamic agenda, the military stepped in. Turkey’s generals feared that the government would suppress secular opposition, allow Islamic dress in universities, and abandon Turkey’s Western alliances. In fact, however, the Welfare Party actually adhered to most mainstream Turkish political practices. It did try to plant sympathizers in ministries it controlled, but so had many previous governments. Still, the secular press warned of an imminent Islamist revolution.

On February 28, 1997, the military—with wide backing from civil society and the secular media—forced Erbakan and his party out of power. The bloodless coup had major unintended consequences. It spurred serious soul-searching among Turkey’s Islamists, eventually sparking a generational and ideological rift within the movement.

The Welfare Party’s pragmatic young leaders—notably Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (not to be confused with Erbakan) and Abdullah Gül—recognized the red lines of Turkish secularism. (Erdoğan, then mayor of Istanbul, learned the hard way. In 1999, he spent four months in jail for reciting a poem with Islamic undertones.) After participating in democratic politics for more than three decades, Turkey’s Islamists had already tempered their views to win a wider following at elections. By the late 1990s, political Islam was ready to fully integrate into mainstream politics.

In 2001, Erdoğan created the Justice and Development Party, the fifth and final incarnation of the pro-Islamist party, from the ashes of the dissolved Welfare Party and the Virtue Party. He crafted the term conservative democracy—rather than an Islamic reference—to explain his political agenda. He understood that political liberalization would consolidate the AKP’s power base.

To achieve two crucial objectives, Erdoğan put democratic reforms at the top of his agenda, seeking to comply with European Union (EU) membership guidelines. The move earned him the support of Turkey’s business community, liberal intellectuals, and pragmatic middle class. It also won him political legitimacy in the eyes of the military. After all, European recognition had long been the ultimate prize in Atatürk’s vision of a Westernized Turkey. And by giving priority to social services, the AKP also appealed to the impoverished underclass. Erdoğan’s strategy paid off. In November 2002, the party won the largest bloc of seats in the parliamentary elections.

Reforms

Between 2002 and 2006, the AKP government passed a series of reforms to harmonize Turkey’s judicial system, civil-military relations, and human rights practices with European norms. Through its formidable grassroots network and with governmental institutions now in its hands, the party made health care and housing credits more accessible, distributed food, increased grants for students, improved the infrastructure of poorer urban districts, and made minority rights for Kurds and non-Muslims a priority.

Reforms were not confined to politics. The party also managed to get the Turkish economy back on track after the economic crisis of 2001 by following International Monetary Fund guidelines.

Between 2002 and 2011, the Turkish economy grew by an average rate of 7.5 percent annually. Lower inflation and interest rates led to a major increase in domestic consumption. And the Turkish economy began to attract unprecedented foreign direct investment, thanks to a disciplined privatization program. The average per capita income rose from $2,800 U.S. in 2001 to around $10,000 U.S. in 2011, exceeding annual income in some of the new EU members.

Yet even as the AKP adopted a more liberal order, Kemalist segments of Turkish society grew increasingly suspicious that it had a hidden agenda. They feared that the AKP was exploiting the EU membership process to diminish the military’s political role and, eventually, the Kemalist legacy. They balked, for instance, at AKP measures to increase the ratio of civilians to military officers on the National Security Council, elect a civilian to head the National Security Council, remove military representatives from the boards of the Council of Higher Education and the Radio and Television High Council, and grant broadcasting and cultural rights to Kurds.

On foreign policy, Prime Minister Erdoğan’s willingness to compromise on the question of Cyprus also polarized Turkish politics. The AKP backed a United Nations plan to reunify the island; the military adamantly opposed the plan. The deadlock was an important obstacle to EU membership—and the pro-Islamist party actually appeared more willing to compromise than either the secularists or the military. A subsequent investigation revealed that a military coup over the Cyprus question was barely averted in 2004 because of divisions among the Turkish generals.

Polarization

Turkey’s internal divisions deepened between 2006 and 2008. The AKP had long wanted to lift the ban on Islamic dress—or wearing of headscarves—in universities and end discrimination against graduates of Islamic high schools (such as special criteria for their university entry exams). The AKP had strong popular support for both steps. More than 50 percent of Turkish women covered their heads.

Party leaders preferred to promote reform by building a national consensus rather than by challenging the secularist establishment head-on. But secularists remained wary. They pointed to Erdoğan’s brief attempt to criminalize adultery in 2004, his appointment of religious conservatives to bureaucratic positions, and AKP attempts to discourage the sale of alcohol.

Tensions between the AKP and the military climaxed after Erdoğan announced he would nominate Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül for the presidency. The presidency is a prestigious though ceremonial post—but also the last bastion of secularism in the eyes of the military and the opposition.

On April 27, 2007, the generals staged the country’s first “e-coup.” They posted a warning on the military’s website that “if necessary, the Turkish Armed Forces will not hesitate to make their position and stance abundantly clear as the absolute defenders of secularism.” Given Turkey’s history of military interventions, the note was a thinly veiled threat that a more conventional coup might be in the offing.

In a sign of the AKP’s growing self-confidence, Erdoğan did not back off. He instead decided to defy the generals by calling early elections. The AKP won a landslide victory in mid-2007 with almost 47 percent of the votes—compared with 34 percent in 2002 when it came to power. The election was a public rebuke to the generals.

The AKP crowned its victory when parliament elected Gül to the presidency. But the military shadow still loomed over Turkey. The top brass stayed away from the inauguration. And in 2008, Turkey’s chief prosecutor tried to have the AKP closed on grounds that it pursued an Islamist agenda to subvert the secular republic. The party survived this “constitutional coup” attempt by a whisker. The court voted against closure by just one vote.

Consolidation

Between 2008 and 2011, the AKP consolidated its gains. Despite the political turbulence, Turkey weathered the global financial crisis of 2008 with remarkable success. The economy continued double-digit growth rates in 2009, after a brief recession. By 2012, Turkey’s unemployment rate and budget deficit were at record lows.

In June 2011, the AKP won its third consecutive electoral victory with nearly 50 percent of the vote. The country’s global stature also reached new heights. As uprisings shook the Middle East, reformers in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia often cited Turkey and the AKP as models.

The AKP also consolidated its supremacy over the military—a first since the creation of the modern state. On July 29, 2011, the military’s chief of staff resigned after a disagreement with Erdoğan about staff promotions. The same day, the heads of the army, navy, and air force requested early retirement. By early 2012, half of all Turkish admirals and one out of ten active-duty generals were in jail for plotting against the government. It was a paradigm shift for a country that had experienced three military coups and constant military meddling for almost a century.

Key Positions
Democracy

The AKP heralds democracy; its more seasoned politicians have participated in free elections for two decades. But Turkey remains polarized, with its opposition parties ever more concerned about creeping authoritarianism and Islamism. Opponents call the government a civilian dictatorship and deplore its use of the judicial system to neuter the military, the opposition media, and rival political parties.

Opposition fears are reflected in the court case against Ergenekon, a shadowy organization with possible ties to the military. The judiciary launched the case in 2007, shortly after AKP’s second electoral victory, claiming that Ergenekon had planned a coup. The prosecutor accused hundreds of military officials, journalists, and political activists of involvement. Leaked documents claimed the Ergenekon network was tied to several bombings and assassinations, which were intended to create chaos and justify a military coup. AKP critics contended that the Erdoğan government used the case to silence its secular opponents. The AKP responded that it did not control the judiciary—which had even tried to ban the party as recently as 2008.

Minorities

The status of Turkey’s Kurdish population has been the AKP’s Achilles’ heel. Kurdish aspirations have been thwarted largely by legal and political obstacles that are the remnants of the 1982 constitution written under military rule. Despite the AKP’s rhetorical commitment to deal with Kurdish expectations, Erdoğan has not spent the political capital needed to expand the limited political space for Turkey’s ethnic groups. He now seems to have resorted to the classic Turkish mantra that there can be no democratization when the country is facing terrorism. As a result, violence has only grown in the Kurdish southeast.

Women’s Rights

The AKP has done nothing formal to alter women’s rights. To the contrary, by pushing for EU membership and harmonizing Turkish laws with European standards, the AKP has eliminated some of the legal obstacles that discriminate against women in the labor market and civil code. But the AKP is also clearly a conservative and patriarchal political party. Erdoğan’s understandings of family values and gender equality are not progressive.

Until recently, the restraints of Turkey’s strong secular constitution impeded observant Muslim women more than secular females. Women who wear hejab, or head covering, were banned from official events and public university classes, for example. Erdoğan sent his two daughters, who cover their hair, to American universities abroad because they could not attend Turkish colleges. In 2011, the AKP changed the legislation dealing with dress codes in public universities and legalized hejab. The restrictive dress code for civil servants, however, remains in place.

The West

AKP leaders claim that membership in the European Union is their strategic priority. Yet the AKP has demonstrated growing self-confidence by expanding Turkey’s reach and diplomatic relations beyond the West. The EU’s reluctance to embrace Turkey formally and the European economic crisis have also led the AKP to look to the Middle East, Africa, Russia, and Central Asia as areas where Turkey can exert soft power—what Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu called Turkey’s “strategic depth.” Analysts dubbed the activist Turkish foreign policy “neo-Ottomanism.”

Yet the AKP had almost no problems in Turkey’s relations with the United States. “Americans used to ask: Who lost Turkey? Now they are busy asking questions about the success of [the] Turkish model,” a senior AKP official quipped. The AKP even decided to host NATO radar installations needed for the new U.S. missile-defense system against Iran.

Israel

For decades, Turkey had the closest relations of any Muslim state to Israel. Under the AKP, Erdoğan even mediated briefly between Israel and Syria during 2007 and 2008. The AKP foreign policy generally sought “zero-problem with neighbors.” But as the AKP deepened Turkey’s ties to Iran and the Hamas government in Gaza—including AKP efforts to facilitate humanitarian aid to Gaza—tensions deepened with Israel. Erdoğan also once called Syrian President Bashar al Assad his “brother,” although after the Syrian uprising began in 2011, Turkey called for Assad to step down. Erdoğan also opened Turkey for Syria’s opposition summits, defecting soldiers, and refugees.

By 2012, Turkey instead seemed to have “zero neighbors without problems,” a senior diplomat said, because of growing problems with neighboring Syria, Iran, and Israel.

The Future

Under the AKP, Turkey is still not a liberal democracy, despite the pattern of multiparty elections. Compared to the lost decade of the 1990s, however, it has become a more multifaceted democracy, with elections, public opinion, opposition parties, parliament, the media, and civil society all exerting more power. For the first time in the republic’s history, Turkey’s performance is also totally in civilian hands. The military, once empowered to check civilian politics, is no longer strong enough either to step in or to threaten to take action. And the party with Islamic roots has undertaken more reforms required for EU entry than any of Turkey’s secular parties.

The AKP government feigned modesty about its standing in the Islamic world. “We are not presenting ourselves as a model,” Erdoğan told an audience of Turkish journalists in 2011. “Maybe we are a source of inspiration or a successful example in some areas.” Yet Turkey’s experience with Islamist politics—no longer simply an experiment—was widely cited both inside and outside the Muslim world.

By 2012, however, the AKP had also exposed serious democratic shortcomings. It increasingly cracked down on its critics, especially those in the media. After a decade in power, Erdoğan had also failed to follow through on promises of a new constitution and reforms that would address pivotal issues facing the country—the Kurdish question, human rights, and freedom of expression. Because of mounting Kurdish terrorism and Erdoğan’s populist instincts, the more power Erdoğan won at the polls, the less interested he appeared in taking those steps.

Authors

Ömer Taşpınar

Publication: The Woodrow Wilson Center

Image Source: © Osman Orsal / Reuters

The Syrian Conflict and the International Alliance Race

Ruth H. Santini — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Unrest in Syria has been ongoing for the past 13 months. It was initiated by 15 kids in the southwestern city of Deraa, who were inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings and openly mocked the regime by creatively expressing their dissent. When these kids were arrested and tortured, anti-regime demonstrations were triggered. Protests spread from Deraa to Damascus, Homs, Homa and other cities. Since then, the regime has stepped up its repression, increasingly targeting villages that host protesters and armed fighters. There have been approximately 9,000 casualties, 200,000 people are displaced within the country and almost 40,000 have escaped to neighbouring countries – mainly Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Two critical junctures in particular are key to understanding the diplomatic stalemate. The resulting choices shed light on both the humanitarian consequences and the regional and international power politics that played out.

The first of these junctures occurred last summer, when the regime’s actions towards the uprisings turned increasingly violent and bloody. The international community started to divide itself among different interpretations of the events on the ground and their implications. While Moscow deplored all solutions ignoring an involvement of the regime and of Alawites in general, the Gulf states started to envisage ways to support the Syrian opposition. European and US declaratory policies became assertive but toothless. Some of the difficulties in adopting a clear-cut stance were linked to the status of the Syrian opposition - which started as civic uprisings, then turned into militarized forms of resistance and eventually, as we see now, paved the way for guerrilla warfare dynamics. Parts of the opposition coalesced around the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which however falls short of representing a unified front of opposition against the regime. Also, minorities, such as Alawites, Druzes, Christians and Kurds failed to be integrated into the Syrian National Council (SNC) - the political body supposed to represent the opposition. This led many to suspect that sectarian logics would dictate the evolution of the opposition, something which significantly diminished the SNC and FSA appeal and atout. More broadly, many in Western capitals shared the Russian fear that a post-Assad Syria would become a buffer zone between regional powers (Iran on the one hand and Saudi Arabia on the other), characterized by persistent internal instability, with potential devastating regional spill-over effects.

The second juncture happened in New York last February at the UN Security Council. The US and Europe put forward a resolution on Syria, supported by the Arab League, guided by Qatar. The idea was to try to broker a Yemeni solution with the Assad regime, devising an acceptable exit strategy for the Assads.

Read the full article at Aspenia Online »

Authors

Ruth H. Santini

Publication: The Aspen Institute

Image Source: © Handout . / Reuters

Finding a Path to Inclusive Growth in Arab Economies

Kemal Derviş, Hafez Ghanem, Daniel Kaufmann and Homi Kharas — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 12:21:00 -0400

“Bread, liberty, social justice” was the rallying cry of revolutionaries in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in the Arab world last year. Democracy and freedom were certainly key demands for young Arabs protesting in the streets, but they were not the only demands. They also cried for “bread” and “social justice”.

There are high expectations for the new governments of the Arab Spring countries to improve the quality of life for their citizens. Yet, debates in the newly-elected parliaments and legislatures barely touch on economic issues. Instead, these bodies are consumed with the new politics.

In Tunisia, the transition government has taken some steps to stabilize the economy and reached agreements with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to fund part of the transition costs. However, longer-term institutional and structural reforms are yet to be addressed. Egypt’s successive transition governments have so far not taken the necessary decisions to stop the hemorrhaging of international reserves or to restore economic growth. Egypt has lost two-thirds of its foreign reserves since January 2011, its budget deficit is at 10 percent of GDP, and the government is borrowing heavily from domestic banks, crowding out private businesses.

New governments in Arab Spring economies, starting with the government that will take power after the upcoming presidential elections in Egypt, may end up having electoral legitimacy yet they will inherit huge economic and social challenges, including high unemployment, poor and deteriorating public services, unsustainable budget deficits, low reserves and negative or low growth. These governments will have very little room for maneuver.

Unless the political transitions quickly create economic change, based on a national dialogue that generates a sustainable path to inclusive growth, these new governments will be caught up in a cycle of short-term economic crisis management that will satisfy no one. That would not be unusual. In our new book, After the Spring: Economic Transitions in the Arab World, we found that almost half of the 103 countries that experienced rapid democratization since 1960 had a worse economic situation five years after the beginning of their transition.

The Economic Research Forum, the largest network of economists working on the Middle East, is organizing its annual conference in Cairo next week. This is an excellent opportunity for continuing the conversation in the region about how to achieve a transition to economic prosperity and social justice, and to debate whether some of the successful experiences in other countries transitioning to democracy can be adapted to the Arab context.

Although Arab economies are quite different from each other, the type of transition they are facing has similarities. We suggest that a program for inclusive growth in the post-revolution Arab countries needs to focus on opportunities for young people, reforming public institutions, promoting a competitive private sector, and integrating with the rest of the world.

Nearly two-thirds of the Arab population is less than 30 years old and youth unemployment is 22 percent. The situation is even worse for young women whose unemployment rate is 28 percent. In the short term, governments can best hope to promote jobs by encouraging small businesses, by providing large-scale semi-skilled training like the successful Chile Joven program, and by job training and matching programs like the voucher program of the National Organization of Women in Jordan that has helped young women get jobs. In the medium term, education systems need reform to provide young men and women with the skills needed to compete in a globalized economy rather than the credentials needed to get a public sector job in an economy of privilege.

Arab public sectors also require a modernization of state institutions to deliver better services without unsustainable deficits and untargeted subsidies, cronyism and many public employment sinecures. Arab states have been captured by elites and have mainly benefitted a few well-connected private citizens. This must change and be replaced by a new culture of responsiveness to all citizens, freedom of information, audits to combat corruption, and reforms focusing on service delivery.

Despite notable exceptions, much of the private sector in many Arab economies is inefficient, operating in the shadow of a large public enterprise sector and over-regulated as well as rent seeking. The private sector is also synonymous with corruption in the minds of many citizens in the Arab world. An undeveloped financial sector that funnels savings to the government and large firms does not help. The result is that most Arab economies have failed to industrialize. Arab economies need a dynamic private sector where small enterprises can compete on an equal footing and where young men and women can find opportunities as entrepreneurs as well as employees. Hence, reforms need to include support to small and medium enterprises; credit for small businesses (and especially women); upholding property rights and the rule of law; developing infrastructure; simplifying regulatory frameworks; and reforming tax systems to encourage investment and job creation.

Arab economies also will need new regional and global strategies that can help integrate their economies with the rest of the world so that they can join the ranks of fast-growing emerging economies like Brazil, China, India and Turkey. There is clearly a need to promote non-oil exports and to make better use of the instruments offered by international and regional financial institutions to smooth the costs of transition over time. But there are limits to what external donors can do. Most can only provide loans, not grants, and these are of limited use to countries that are already highly indebted. Market access to the West exists, but firms cannot take advantage of it because of the lack of infrastructure, limited regional connectivity and border barriers. Before they can help, Western donors must see their trust re-established in the region. After all, they were large supporters of the previous regimes. So they would be well-advised to be selective and humble, and provide advice when it is asked for but leave space for an Arab dialogue that should determine each country’s future path.

The young men and women who led the Arab Spring have shown tremendous energy, resourcefulness and organizational abilities. They must now find common ground on an economic platform that is financially realistic and sustainable but delivers results in terms of bread, liberty and social justice. The dialogue among Arab economists next week is precisely what is needed to ensure that these countries join the scores of other countries that have prospered economically after the democratic revolutions of the last 50 years.

Authors

Image Source: © Ismail Zetouni / Reuters

Liberalizing Monarchies? How Gulf Monarchies Manage Education Reform

Leigh Nolan — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

With the onset of the Arab uprisings, Gulf monarchies face increased pressure on their traditional ruling balance. Gulf Arab oil monarchies have traditionally been resistant to political reform, and their reaction to the Arab spring has largely followed suit. To focus solely on political liberalization, however, is to ignore ambitious societal and bureaucratic reforms that have been launched in recent years. In many ways, the processes and pressures involved in reforming the state’s “soft institutions” – whether due to pressure from political elites, citizens, or the international community – offer important lessons for broader institutional reform in these cautiously liberalizing monarchies.

This paper focuses on one of such institution—the educational sector—and analyzes the extent to which reform in that sphere can provide models for wider liberalization. Education reform in the Gulf is a politically charged and socially sensitive endeavour with potential winners and losers among various co-opted groups. Looking at the experiences of three Gulf states—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—the study seeks to consider how successful these monarchies have been in transitioning from highly centralized and rigid bureaucracies to more responsive, innovative, and dynamic systems.

While all three countries share certain characteristics, the experiences of education reform in each differ significantly. All three have experimented with varying levels decentralization and privatization. In Saudi Arabia, the institution of higher education is implicated in both the imperatives of liberalization and the regime’s religious legitimacy.

The ruling Al Saud have initiated controversial educational reforms by using peripheral institutions in order to bypass the clerical establishment. Institutions such as academic cities, international partnerships, and quasi-governmental organizations have often provided a backdoor for reform. International accreditation and metrics also provide an external reference, which the regime can use to press for politically sensitive curricular reforms. These strategies have enabled the Saudi regime to accelerate the pace of education reform without directly challenging established institutions and their entrenched interests. However, in the absence of systemic reform that tackles those entrenched interests, the extent to which this model can succeed—and be replicated—remains limited.

In contrast to Saudi Arabia, Qatar has taken dramatic steps to transform its education system. With no cohesive opposition groups, Qatar has been able to quickly implement pilot education reform projects and create the most high-profile branch campus model in the Middle East. Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani and his wife Sheikha Mozah have lent their support to a range of experimental and ambitious reforms, even outpacing demands from society and many liberal elites. Qatari education reform at both the secondary and tertiary level has been a top-down process, with the royal family as its driving force. As a result of the rapid pace of implementation and limited societal outreach, however, several aspects of the intended reform have become mired in unanticipated bureaucratic and social resistance. The lack of substantive engagement with various stakeholders in the education system prior to initiating an independent schools model led to substantial societal backlash, resulting in a recentralization of administrative control and a backtracking on several of the more controversial elements of the reforms.

In the UAE meanwhile, each of the Emirates has pursued different approaches to the privatization of education, with Dubai embracing an unfettered market approach and Abu Dhabi supporting a statist approach. Due to Dubai’s financial crisis, the more state-centric model is gaining influence as Abu Dhabi asserts a greater role over the federal structure. As in Qatar, Abu Dhabi’s model of education reform has not significantly expanded avenues for societal participation, and the process of generating and implementing education reform remains centralized at the top.

The different models for higher education reform pursued by the three GCC nations studied suggests that demography, ideology, and resources all affect the degree to which a monarchy is able to pursue institutional innovation. A shared tactic, however, is the use of new or peripheral institutions such as Abu Dhabi Education Council, the Qatar Foundation, and Saudi Aramco, to circumvent turgid bureaucracies and rapidly implement high-profile pilot project reforms. Nonetheless, a pilot project does not imply systemic transformation. While education reforms may promote liberalization in other sectors of society—either through creating a better educated, more demanding populace, or through a “beacon effect” —they are unlikely to provide a genuinely replicable model for reform.

Whether the current model of “autocratic modernization” can deliver dynamic and globally competitive public institutions remains to be seen. As shown with the creation of education cities and parallel institutions, it is possible to rapidly implement model reforms through bureaucratic maneuvering. However, these efforts are largely bounded, and their ability to permeate through the rest of the system is limited. Systemic and sustainable reform requires broader societal consultation and modes of participation to limit backlash and increase bureaucratic responsiveness. Without such mechanisms, education reform will likely remain superficial and inadequate to the task.

Leigh Nolan was a Visiting Fellow with the Brookings Doha Center in 2011. Her research focuses on the political dynamics of institutional change in Saudi Arabia, through the lens of higher education reform. Nolan was a Boren graduate fellow in Yemen in 2007 and a Fullbright-Hayes lecturer in Iraqi Kurdistan in the spring of 2009. She received a Ph.D. in International Relations in 2011 from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University.

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Leigh Nolan

Publication: Brookings Doha Center

Meet the Press at Brookings: The Egypt Revolution One Year On

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:00:00 -0500

Event Information

February 8, 2012
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

One year ago, a wave of revolutionary change swept across the Middle East and North Africa. The political protests in Cairo captured the world’s attention as Egyptians took to Tahrir Square to call for President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation. On February 11, Mubarak stepped down after nearly 30 years in power. Now, one year later, democratic elections have given Islamists a majority in the Egyptian Parliament. But that is only the beginning of the political process: constitutional changes will have to be debated and decided; the division of power among Parliament, the presidency, and the military will have to be resolved; and the Egyptian economy will have to be put back on a growth trajectory.

On February 8, Foreign Policy at Brookings and NBC’s Meet the Press hosted a panel discussion to assess the implications of the Egyptian revolution at its first anniversary. David Gregory, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, moderated the session, part of a series of discussions on foreign policy issues. Panelists included Robin Wright, author of Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World (Simon & Schuster, 2011) and joint fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Martin Indyk, vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings; Tamara Wittes, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, who was responsible for U.S. democracy promotion in the Middle East; and Shadi Hamid, fellow and director of research of the Brookings Doha Center, who appeared live from Doha via video feed. Hamid and Indyk have recently returned from Egypt.

After the program, the panelists took audience questions.

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Meet the Press at Brookings: The Egypt Revolution One Year On

Transcript

Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20120208_mtp_egypt_revolution

Participants

Moderator

David Gregory

Anchor, Meet the Press
NBC News

Panelists

Tamara Wittes

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs
U.S. Department of State

Robin Wright

Joint Fellow
United States Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Will Yemen's Peace Agreement Hold?

Ibrahim Sharqieh — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:14:00 -0500

Having come close but failing to sign three times before, President Ali Abdullah Saleh has finally endorsed a Gulf-brokered agreement. The mandate transfers power to his deputy, Abed Rabbo Mansour al-Hadi, in exchange for Saleh’s immunity from prosecution. President Saleh’s abdication undoubtedly marks a critical turning point in Yemen’s ongoing civil strife, signaling an important step toward social peace and de-escalation. Nonetheless, serious challenges lie ahead in terms of implementation that will be crucial to the establishment of lasting peace in the country.

The sporadic violence that followed the signing of the deal, particularly in Taiz, seems to suggest that, despite widespread international support, the accord remains vulnerable to Saleh’s tactics, particularly his manipulation of the power-transfer process. Ongoing violence suggests that the act of signing the agreement was insufficient to diffuse tension in Yemen and must be followed by specific measures to prevent Saleh’s continued exploitation of various stakeholders.

The signing of the agreement signifies a key milestone in Yemen. Crucially, it demonstrates that a powerhouse of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Saudi Arabia, is politically invested in the transition’s success. Indeed, King Abdullah himself attended the signing, indicating Saudi commitment at the highest level. The king’s reputation is now at stake in ensuring that the agreement is faithfully implemented.

The international community has united in support of a new way forward in Yemen. A number of nations, particularly the United States, joined in a rare global consensus that the GCC-brokered deal was the best course of action for Yemen. Indeed, President Obama praised the signing along with others in the EU, UK and UN.

The agreement calls for an immediate transition of all constitutional authority from President Saleh to Vice President al- Hadi, specifying that Saleh, in his role as honorary president for the next ninety days, does not have the power to veto any of al-Hadi’s decisions. Al-Hadi has notably managed to gain the trust of the opposition. A well-respected military figure, he had the personality to unite the opposition Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) and regime elements. Al-Hadi is also from the southern part of the country, which has traditionally felt marginalized in national politics and will be particularly important in the next phase of Yemen’s transition, when the future of the southern region will be negotiated.

While the agreement signals the start of a much-needed, highly anticipated transition in Yemen, challenges remain. The most difficult of these will be ensuring that the youth opposition in Change Square, the center of protests in the capital city of Sanaa, accept the legitimacy of the deal. Indeed, the parliamentary opposition represented by the JMP signed the accord with Saleh, and they don’t necessarily have the support of the youth or the majority in the street. The youth opposition who began the current uprising ten months ago represent a real force in Yemen and will challenge any implementation of the agreement without their approval. In fact, the protesters are already questioning the agreement’s legitimacy because it grants immunity to Saleh, a pardon they have always fought against. The question of whether the JMP had the right to grant Saleh immunity on behalf of, for example, the families of those who died in protests in the city of Taiz remains unsettled.

Military and security institutions must also be restructured. The GCC transition agreement states that a committee will look into this issue, raising an important question: Will the regime itself change, or will Saleh simply be removed from power while the regime remains intact? This will probably be the most difficult test in the coming weeks. Failure to remove Saleh’s relatives from military and security apparatuses—such as his son Ahmed, leader of the feared Republic Guards—would keep old-regime figures in power, antagonizing the Change Square youth to resume their uprising.

Four actions will help ensure the success of the GCC-brokered agreement. First, youth protesters need to become involved in the transition process. Although they did not participate in the formulation or signing of the agreement, making it vulnerable to challenge, they can take part in government. By involving them in governance as the opposition and ruling party now present their choices for government representatives, the JMP can bring protesters off the streets, address grievances and facilitate buy-in to the new government.

Second, ensuring the presidential elections are transparent will be critical. Free and fair elections will build popular support for the new president. Third, although the agreement allows Saleh to remain in Yemen, he should leave the country, either on his own accord or through outside encouragement. If he remains in Yemen, Saleh will be in direct contact with regime figures, including the military, raising the threat of future escalation.

Now is the time for the Yemeni people to enjoy the fruit of peace from the agreement. While the agreement was signed on an official level, peace will need to be felt on the street. To this end, economic development must be supported. Yemen’s development challenges, particularly unemployment, must be addressed through sustained and committed international support.

Authors

Ibrahim Sharqieh

Publication: The National Interest

Meeting Graduates’ Aspirations and Diversifying Employment in Qatar and the UAE

Zamila Bunglawala — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – two rentier states – have made credible attempts to reduce the size of their public sectors and promote private sector employment and entrepreneurship. Both countries are aware that they cannot rely on high oil and gas revenues and instead need to diversify their labor markets and economies. Yet despite efforts to reform their education systems, develop their workforces and promote private sector growth, both countries still have extremely high levels of public sector employment.

The urgency and timeliness of economic diversification initiatives is all the greater given the significant youth bulge in Qatar and the UAE. Too often, however, efforts to address the problems of high public sector employment are conducted in isolation of the career aspirations and preferences of young people themselves. If the governments of Qatar and the UAE are to diversify their employment, they must address the variety of financial, social and cultural influences that often dictate the job choices of their youth.

The study provides an analysis of the career attitudes and motivations of university students and recent graduates in Qatar and the UAE. In so doing, it aims to identify the range of obstacles that exist in the transition between education and employment. In addition to interviews and discussion groups with young Qataris and Emiratis, key public and private sector stakeholders and NGOs were also consulted. Through qualitative analysis, the paper identifies key policies that could help support sustainable labor market diversification.

The paper finds that policies must address the limitations of labor markets and the effects these limitations have on the employment choices of young people. Otherwise, the high salary differentials between public and private sector employment and limited awareness of entrepreneurship support mean that the status quo of high public sector employment is likely to persist. There is also, however, a need to reform the public sector itself. Creating more state owned enterprises, which comply with market oriented, performance-based management rules, while encouraging mobility between the public and private sectors will be crucial. Other measures include introducing greater parity between public and private sector pay, increasing young peoples’ employability and soft skills levels, and removing barriers to business start-up and female employment.

The study concludes that a new strategic framework should be introduced to facilitate young people’s transition from education to employment. This framework should go beyond the objectives of nationalization targets, and address barriers such as salary level and a lack of training, while also seeking to enhance productivity, mobility, and innovation in the workforce. Crucially, it should also ensure that all policies and programs include systems of monitoring and evaluation – which have often been absent in the past.

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Authors

Zamila Bunglawala

Publication: Brookings Doha Center

The Long Spring Ahead for the Arab World

Stephen R. Grand — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:40:00 -0500

Talk of the Arab Spring has turned, in some quarters, to talk of an Arab Winter. The latest cause for pessimism has been the results of the first of three rounds of Egyptian parliamentary elections, where the Muslim Brotherhood and a Salafist political party garnered, respectively, roughly 49% and 20% of the available seats, making it likely they will dominate the next parliament.

As I wrote in the chapter "Democratization 101" in The Arab Awakening: America and the Transformation of the Middle East, we know from experience elsewhere in the world that democratic transitions are long and complicated processes. Toppling a dictatorship is in many respects the easy part; building a new democratic state in its place is a much more complicated affair. Egypt's transition comes with no guarantees that it will lead, in the end, to democracy. There are bound to be setbacks and surprises along the way. Regime insiders and non-democratic groups will look for opportunities to try to co-opt the revolution for their own purposes.

We also always knew that the Muslim Brotherhood would perform well in these elections. The Brotherhood and the Salafis have long been better organized and better resourced than their liberal counterparts, in part because the Mubarak government found it more difficult to crack down on religious groups. It is one of the reasons that successive U.S. administrations at times hesitated in pushing too hard for democracy. Success in democratic politics often boils down to organization—how many voters can you get to the polls—and here the Islamists had a significant head start.

Before giving in to pessimism, it is important to recall all that has changed over the past year. Last November, Hosni Mubarak's regime was conducting parliamentary elections that were as fraudulent as they come, in which his New Democratic Party secured 209 of the 211 seats in parliament; this year's have been remarkably free and fair by comparison, even if we may not like the results. Now Mubarak is on trial and his NDP has been consigned to the dustbin of history. Elsewhere, Tunisians have sent former president Ben Ali into exile and held successful elections of their own; Libyans have dispensed with Muammar Qaddafi; Yemenis seem finally to be edging Ali Abdullah Saleh from power; and Syria's Bashar Assad is internationally isolated and on the defensive. In the one region of the world that seemed immune to the democratic winds of change—the Arab world—that change is now sweeping through at a breathtaking pace.

In The Arab Awakening, I discuss the uncertainties associated with democratic transitions but argue that the best guarantor of success over the long-term will be the emergence of a political constituency for democracy. Well-designed laws and institutions are important, but they will only work as intended if the public is prepared to defend them. Politicians need to know that their own citizens will make them pay a price should they deviate from the new rules of the game.

In this regard, right before Egyptians went to the polls, a drama of great import played out in Tahrir Square. Angered by the military's killing of scores of protestors, more than a hundred thousand Egyptians flooded back into the square demanding that the military speed the transition to civilian rule. In response, the interim government resigned and the military moved up the date for presidential elections and the transfer of governing authority to civilians.

These developments were quickly overshadowed by the liberals' poor showing in the elections. If Egypt's new generation of youth could not win the ultimate test of elections, what use were they? Indeed, much of the Egyptian public has tired of the protestors, as perhaps have we. What seemed so remarkable a year ago—ordinary Arabs taking to the streets to demand their rights—now seems commonplace. Many Egyptians have had enough of protestors littering their streets, just as we've grown indifferent to the scenes of protests flooding our television screens every night. We're not just weary but wary -- concerned that mass protests will degenerate into chaos or mob rule.

But at a time when political institutions are weak or unformed, continued public demonstrations of citizens' desire for democracy remain vital. The elections may be determining who will serve in the next parliament, but the demonstrators in the streets are shaping how much power that parliament will actually wield.

Three forces now seem to be vying to determine Egypt's future: 1) the military, which seems intent above all on protecting its own privileges; 2) the Islamists, who are likely to emerge as a governing bloc, but remain conflicted internally over their commitment to democracy and the role that religion should play in public life; and 3) the youth of Tahrir Square. Despite liberals' poor showing at the polls, the latter still have a critical role to play, ensuring one form of tyranny does not simply replace another. Until democratic institutions fully take root in Egypt, their help will continue to be needed to ensure that the military moves forward with the promised transition to democracy, the new parliament plays by the democratic rules of the game, and minority rights are respected.

An empowered and engaged citizenry remains critical to preserving the fruits of this Arab Spring.

Authors

Stephen R. Grand

The Role of New Media in the Arab Awakening

Michael Doran — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:19:00 -0500

At a recent event, Michael Doran discussed the role new media has played in the Arab awakening, examining the impact the ability of opposition groups to quickly get information to followers has had on the uprisings, as well as the limitations of the available tools.

Authors

Michael Doran