independent study on democratization presently and during 20th century

7/31/2019 Independent Study on Democratization Presently and During 20th Century

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Partha P. Choudhury

MLINS 6392

Dr. Stockton

Independent Study on Regime Change and Democratization Trends

April 2, 2012


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In the year 2011, it had seemed as if the entire world had gained political consciousness.

Everyone was apprized of their surroundings and the Arab world in particular, was seeing

upheavals due to despots and dictators who were feeling their shelf life among their citizenry.

Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, who had been hanging onto power throughout the year of 2011

amid mass protests among Yemeni citizens who were calling for the dictator to be ousted, finally

relented in the face of the same people whose collective will made him leave office. Hosni

Mubarak of Egypt, who was a stalwart ally of the US, saw his grip on power eroding amid mass

student and civil protests. However in Egypt, where the student led protests was so seemingly

necessary to bring in a form of democracy, after the ousting of Mubarak, military consolidation

of government has occurred and much to the dismay of those same students, Islamists in the

form of the Muslim Brotherhood have had much gains to the extent of quite possibly ruling

Egypt. But this lamentable situation is bolstered by the fact that Egypt is considered the hub of

the Arab world, where there are westernized intellectuals, where important commerce takes place

and it is where the crme of the Arab world choose to situate themselves. Bahrains Sunni

reigning monarchy had methodically and quite capably avoided the often poetic justice that is

often meted out to tyrannical oligarchs in times of upheaval by a very engaged and very Shiite

population. Syrias Basher Al-Assad, whose father was the late Hafez Al-Assad, denied even the

most negligible reforms in his country and is now seeing Syrias worst ever civil unrest. How

long can he hang onto the semblance of maintaining his autocracy is a question of time and the

earnest desire of the Syrian people to bring in a true democracy, which is ultimately what the

countries in the Western world are pinning their hopes onto. As Ambassador Susan Rice decried

Russia for an arms deal to the Syrian government as well as their voting against the United

Nations Security Councils efforts to facilitate a binding resolution that would condemn the


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Syrian government, the Syrian people are finding that their lives are forfeit and the state-

sponsored murder of any person, sometimes even exclusively children, is being undertaken by

the Assad regime in order to quell any form of dissent. Regime change, in the past, had

seemingly been dissuaded satisfactorily in the contemporary Muslim world. As many political

scientists have observed, leftism was deftly disregarded as being irrelevant wherever the banner

of Islam is concerned. Can the Fourth Wave of democracy be applicable to the Middle East?

Among the populace there, is there indeed what many theorists have called the democratic

impulse?

In the ushering in of the age oflex mercatoria, where many of the laws of much of the

countries of the world are dictated by the market, the convergence of markets and the world in

general in a concept known as globalization is the new standard. At a time where borders are

starting to be erased and the general easement of the sort of governance many countries exercise

takes place, what makes certain countries susceptible to stagnation and hold onto the most

rudimentary forms of governance? Many of these countries are nominally called democracies,

but in terms of the sort of nepotism, subprime governmental aid services and the dismal

alleviation of the poor standard of living in countries in the global south, the idea of a truly

proportionate and representative democracy is far from reality. As armchair corrupt politicians

no longer seem to be as appropriate in the manner in which the world is gaining the sort of

momentum towards vibrant and pluralistic democracy, the populations that were languishing in

archaic political systems are seeing upheavals towards reforms and liberalizations that come in

the form of younger and charismatic leaders and an engaged electorate. As the popular saying

goes, Are we there yet? is far from appropriate for these new democracies, and Ive got a

feeling that Freedom House is in no rush to labeling any of them as failed states that never


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really had the democratic impulse. It is very true and is especially endearing to many to hear

that democracy is a work in progress and chiding these countries for certain traits that dont

mesh with democracy in the Western world is antithetical to the larger effort.

This paper, even though seems to be concentrating on the Middle East, in particular the

Arab world and the Maghreb, is really about democratization in the contemporary world with

test cases in countries in the Orient such as South Korea, the Philippines as well as the Levant.

As the year of 2011 would have it, there has never been a better time to assess the sort of impact

that this will have in terms of governance and the sort of regime change in these respective

countries. I am willfully asking the question of what end all of these events will have and what

will all of this culminate into. I believe that as a student of governance and international

relations, Im obligated to put in my input and general perceptions of this trend. And as a fellow

student whos got a keen interest in a burgeoning and better world, I take into account the work

that youth in other countries have undertaken, whove made the ultimate sacrifice in many

circumstances, who have served as power brokers in a fashion that brought about much lasting

change in the world and who have personally taken it upon themselves to be the heralds of a

much more promising tomorrow.

The rhythm and the pace of this paper will follow the very inception of democratization

from a writer who offers a concise definition of what democracy is, then a test case in Spain after

thefranquismo and Portugal after the Carnation Revolution. Both countries were centralized-

authority fascist governments who had made the successful transition towards democratization.

There are also other cases in East Asian countries where after many years of martial law,

democracy started to take root, and finally the Middle East, where contemporary regime change


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might or might not take place. However in the latter, there is the clear understanding that

business cannot go on as usual.

Wiarda, Howard. 1990. Democracy and Democratization from Authoritarianism, (ED)Non-Western Theories of Development. Orlando, FL. Harcourt Brace, pp. 100-119.

On the onset of Democracy and Democratization from Authoritarianism, Wiarda can be

seen as an unabashed proponent of democracy. From his view in terms of the ideological debate,

authoritarianism, however prevalent throughout much of the world in the 20th century, has lost its

footing to democracy. Democracy, with its pluralism and emancipative qualities, has handily

won the debate with most countries in the world setting the trend towards democratic rule. As

proof, democracy with its global ramifications, has become the new standard for vast swaths of

the globe and is gaining momentum. The very countries which were one-party autocracies at one

time throughout the world, have decisively and capably made the transition towards democracy,

whether it should be in Southern Europe or in conflict ravaged Latin America. He recounts that

countries that nominally called themselves democracies have experienced a renaissance in terms

of the governance that they exercise and sees a convergence of this phenomenon. The spread of

democracy to so many areas in such a short period of time is quite remarkableeven heroic, if

ones values lean toward democracy, pluralism, and human rights(Wiarda, 1990, 100). He

remarks that given the comparative political models of the 1990s, the move towards

democratization was never envisaged by most political scientists as an eventuality.

He cautions that democracy is not just about holding elections. Democracy needs a free and

impartial Parliament or Congress, a strong and independent judiciary, free political parties and

bona fide grassroots mobilization to be called a true democracy. In tandem with the spirit of


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democracy, there needs to be tolerance for outside viewpoints and perceptions. This is

indistinguishable from the necessity for human rights and free speech, things which make

democracy governance by consent. This is called civic culture. In saying this, Wiarda alludes

to the fact that although democratic rule has had the tutelary effect on the whole world, there are

different and varying degrees of democracy in the world. In nations that have a post-colonial

past, authoritarianism held sway and transitions from strongman rule to democratization came

mostly through popular protest and civil unrest. What had to happen to usher in that trend had to

be the collective will as well as a compelling enough coalition by various levels in civil society

to bring that form of government consolidation. Wiarda openly asks the question of whether or

not the transition towards democracy from authoritarianism should be a new approach in its own

right in contemporary politics or something that happened spontaneously. Seeing that this was

written in 1990, and Wiarda is a prolific writer on contemporary geopolitical issues even to this

day, Wiardas question has been answered with an emphatic yes and he should see that coming

to educated generalizations about the democratization trend is indeed a discipline in its own

right. To begin, Wiarda proposes that economic necessities had transcended any sort of

pluralistic initiatives in the majority of nations. The feeling was that this would lend itself to

social modernization, which was to be the gist of early development theory. For a while, as

Wiarda states, nascent democracy was the de jure politics in many countries. But he goes on to

say that in many instances, democracy failed in the delivery of actual goods and services

(Wiarda, 1990, 102). Second, that economic disasters gave way to coup d'tats, and third, elites

in certain nations were alarmed at the mobilizations of the lower classes into co-opts. With elites

ready to consolidate control using their own auxiliaries in the military, democratization

languished and became obsolete for years until mass civilian repudiation of the sort of


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authoritarianism used by these states, thus leading to their loss of legitimacy. Within decades,

the populations in these countries became literate, educated and urbanized, leading to democracy

or at least a semblance of it. When it came to the external international influence that Western

democracies had, leading by example spoke volumes and the freedoms enjoyed in the West were

sought to be mimicked by urbanized populations in transitioning regimes.

In closing, Wiarda answers his question as to whether the transitions towards democracy

from authoritarianism should be a discipline in itself. He surmises that yes, that as comparative

politics has had so many dynamics and variables to study, and real case-studies to observe,

transitional states taking the step towards democracy is the trend that is gaining traction and that

since democracy has won the ideological debate in his view, coming to the idea that fixed

orthodoxy when it comes to governance in the form of autocracy is outmoded.

Fishman, Robert M. 2010. Rethinking the Iberian Transformations: HowDemocratization Scenarios Shaped Labor Market OutcomesSpringer Science+Business

Media, pp. 281-310.

Robert Fishmans venture into this article is about the dissimilarity, as he calls it, into the

different scenarios of both Spain and Portugal when it had come to democratization. Another

central argument in Fishmans article is that of liberalization of the markets in these countries,

which Fishman says led Portugal to have more of a solid economic base when it came to the

harmonization of the market and the state compared to Spain. Fishman addresses it as an issue

that the Portuguese government actively participating in; of providing market incentives for a

more female-friendly workforce and using state resources to address social questions, as he

puts it. However, in tandem with the nomenclature Third Wave democracies, this designation


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as Fishman puts it, applies to both countries in the 1970s. The question Fishman is asking is as

follows, The paired comparison of the Iberian cases provides us an opportunity to address a

large theoretical question of major interest to students of political democratization: whether

divergent pathways to democracy generate roughly equivalentor fundamentally dissimilar

outcomes (Fishman, 2010, 283). These markedly different trajectories towards democracy

represent the different sort of initiatives undertaken by these two governments in terms of the

harmonization with the state and markets, with Portugals government taking it upon itself to

incentivize various sectors of the market. Since they actively did that, and not Spain, the

Portuguese government enjoyed mass legitimacy within various sectors of civil society. In

Spain, as Fishman points out, thefranquismodidnt officially end until 1975, the year Francisco

Franco died. The Portuguese transition was decisively marked by the loss of coercive abilities

on the part of the state and the onset of revolutionary social mobilizations such as enterprise

occupations, whereas the Spanish transformation occurred within the framework of fundamental

continuity in the state apparatus and, as a result, a virtual absence of radical mobilizations such

as enduring land or factory occupations (Fishman, 2010, 283). Spain, renowned for its over 400

year Inquisition, couldnt shake off the vestiges of that sort of orthodoxy and abhorrence to the

political and societal mores such as collective bargaining and inherent democratic values. With

the embracing of those very values, Portugal was able to successfully make the transition from

authoritarianism to democracy. And with the state taking an active role in the market, Portugal

was able to thrive in a much shorter period of time, albeit not totally a bonanza. As the nature of

the times would currently have it, Spain has had a much more significant boom when it came to

economic growth. But in terms of the sort of disparate trajectories in which these countries made

the transition towards democratization in the 1970s, Portugal was able to fully incorporate


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harmonization of governance with the market much more humanely and steadily than the

inception of the Spanish democracy. Since what the governments of these two incipient

democracies were restive upon was delivering wages, rent control, and closing the gaps between

unemployment, Portugals government was more able to experience mass legitimacy amid its

own populace.

Kim, Quee-Young. June 1996. From Protest to Change of Regime: The 4-19 Revoltand The Fall of the Rhee Regime in South Korea. Social Forces 74:4. The University of

North Carolina Press. pp. 1179-1209.

Kims 1996 article delineates the struggle of the South Korean people who had collectively

overthrown the Rhee regime on April 19, 1960. He readily acknowledges that this was largely a

student-led movement that had the prestige of overthrowing an autocratic dictator. Kim cites the

wide majority plurality won electorally by then President of the First Republic of Korea

Syngman Rhee amid mass corruption and graft exercised by nepotism on the behalf of his

regime. Rhee was notorious for killing leftists and quelling dissent in South Korea as seditious,

given the unease with Kim Il-Sung in North Korea. What is the most formative massacre

perpetrated by his government was the Jeju Massacre which killed more than what is estimated

to be up to 60,000 supposed revolutionary civilians. When a dictator carries off such a

malthusian sweep of murder against his own citizenry, it is bound to forment dissent among the

populace. Instilled in the South Korean people after that was bound to be the beginnings of

popular rebellion against Rhee. According to Tilly who is cited by Kim, a revolutionary

situation combines:

1) The emergence of rival claims to the state.


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2) The commitment to those claims by a significant segment of the citizenry.3) The incapacity or unwillingness ofrulers to suppress the alternative coalition and/or

commitment to its claims1. (Kim, 1996, 1180).

Protest, in the eyes of the state, is a threat upon its monopoly on power and its Weberian

violence, thus its sovereignty. Since Korea has a paternalistic culture in which authority is

implied as being above the scrutiny of those in the masses, thus a regime such as Rhees was not

beholden to criticism. A central argument of Kim is that economic stagnation in terms of

employment and opportunities in Korea directly led to civil unrest. This is in accord with mass

protest wherever citizens feel the necessity to take the onus upon themselves to unite towards

possible regime change. With South Koreas government under the tutelage of communist

containment espoused by the Americans, any sort of implications of leftist redistribution of

goods and services would be antithetical to Rhees regimes very reason for existing as per the

vast divide between the two different Koreas politically. And due to the rampant stuffing of the

ballot-box by Rhees government in which he had always been the winner, the insignificance of

any real gains by the opposition to Rhee electorally would be the permanent bottleneck in front

of the Korean people towards ushering in a new system of government that would be

representative of their collective pursuits as it related to public opinion at South Korea at the

time. Kim cites the contradiction of Rhees supposed democratic regime in terms of freedom

of the press and expression, and the tactic of censorship imposed by his regime. And with a

youth that was getting educated in universities, oftentimes the topic of conversation was politics

and the necessity to buttress a viable claim against the government towards uniting the Korean

people with a vision that embraced the sort of regime change materializing in the minds of many

South Koreans. At issue with the students was not the transition from democracy to another

1Tilly, Charles. 1993. European Revolutions, 1492-1992. Blackwell.


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form of governance, but democracy itself needed the mandate from the people who were ready to

contribute towards rectifying it in South Korea. As police forces started firing on demonstrators

in Masan, the student led movement started to gain momentum. The consensus was growing that

the power elites started to become docile under such mass protests, until finally Seouls students

in April 19th

protested in front of the Presidential Mansion, however with casualties among

students being above 200. In keeping with the namesake of the April 19th

Movement, Rhee

finally relented his grip on power and abdicated his office on April 26 th, 1960.

In concluding, Kim states that an authoritarian regime cannot survive massive protest

movements without intensifying its repression and a repressive regime often collapses at a point

when the effectiveness of repression reaches a certain threshold of not being able to exercise its

coercion on the citizens (Kim, 1996, 1202). Since South Korea was nominally a democracy,

but not in practice, and had wide and massive civilian discontent, democratization had the

tutelary effect of ushering in the Second Republic of Korea, this time with more democratic

principles than that of its predecessor.

Fox, Jonathan A. 1990. The Challenge of Rural Democratisation: Perspectives fromLatin America and the Philippines. The Journal of Development Studies. Reprint

Series, Center for Global, International UC Santa Cruz. 26(4). pp. 1-18.

Among the established actors in the state that lead to eventual democratization and regime

change, the writer Jonathan Fox takes into consideration the rural masses, who in Marxian terms,

are quite rightly associated with the means of production. In the minds of many elites and

students in transitional regimes, the peasant classes were often deemed malleable when it came

to the indoctrination of democratic principles and reaching out to them was tantamount to the


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overall success of equitable land distribution and tenant farming. If farmers in the rural areas

were expected to get behind the masses, incentives needed to be put into place in the otherwise

elitist pursuit of governance. But with seeking to better the lives of many peasants through

collective democracy, there are many hindrances. As Fox puts it, First, collective action beyond

the immediate village is often constrained by factors largely internal to the process of

articulating and defending interests: the difficulty of mass assembly, the relative dispersion of

communities, the diversity of economic activities, the ecological context, and daily

precariousness of family survival, all of which heighten the costs inherent in decisions to

participateRegional elites often control the electoral machinery, the judicial system, the

economic terms of trade, the allocation of credit, and last but certainly not least, the principle

means of coercion (Fox, 1990, 3). Oftentimes with the lack of urbanization, rural areas are

mostly out of the periphery of the hub of the sociopolitical dialogue and with a lack of adequate

education, democratic principles never quite seemed to generate into an aggregated clamor for

even the most basic rights. This coupled with the lack of media and poor literacy, leads to a

vacuum of understanding of the values that other actors want the rural masses to be privy to.

This was emblematic of the Philippines as well as Latin America where equitable land ownership

was state mandated and very little compromise could be reached with the elites and the peasants.

As was previously stated, the very notion of democratization involves the coopting of all classes

of people to come to an eventual accord about setting policy milestones. Reaching out to the

masses in rural areas was a risky endeavor, given the fact that in certain locales, elites had the

blessing from the central government to use violence to quell any sort of dissent. But as more

present times show, with most Latin American countries and the Philippines making the decisive


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step towards democratization, that that phenomenon couldnt have been achieved had it not been

for rural support.

Linantud, John L. 2008. Pressure and Protection: Cold War Geopolitics and Nation-Building in South Korea, South Vietnam, Philippines, and Thailand. Geopolitics. 13.

pp. 635-656.

As the International Relations discipline of realism would have it, John Linantud

accentuates the neorealism school propositioned by Kenneth Waltz. So much of that discipline

is devoted to the behavior of certain states as being contingent upon their own sense of history

and as it relates to most of the nations being discussed sans Thailand, all have post-colonial

histories and designated compliant elites in power put in charge by Western countries. Central to

neorealist thought is the advocacy of the Scientific Method when it comes to theorizing about

conclusions, which is antithetical to the other discipline of social constructivism.

South Korea, South Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand were in accord with the American

foreign policy of containment and have had skirmishes with leftist guerilla campaigns or in the

case of South Vietnam, takeover by a communist North Vietnam. South Vietnam, which had

religious cleavages in terms of the power exercised by Catholic elites not delegating power to the

Buddhist civilian populations, had the dubious distinction of becoming a foreign policy and

military campaign nightmare in the mindset of Americans at the time. Linantud argues that in

these countries, partisan politics in the US often made the containment policy more rigid.

The general anticipation of war or fending off of one, is a huge incentive for states to develop

and establish ties diplomatically with the US, which these countries had done. But the equation

of power with physical force, common in realism, often seems to forget that winning hearts and

minds is just as if not more important for building a resilient state (Linantud, 2008, 639).


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The emergence of communist China under Mao was a huge game-changer in terms of the

dissolution of the Cold War being exclusively between the Soviet Union and the US. With

forays into Korea and bolstering North Vietnam, the Chinese were able to bring ideological kin

into the embrace of sponsorship and certain war materiel for their leftist efforts. All of this was

inflammatory in the eyes of the Americans as well as surprisingly the Soviets. One cannot help

but see that what Mao had envisaged was most likely China being the sort of tutor when it came

to the ideological war among its Oriental neighbors and brethren and calling out to his

contemporaries towards his own sort of leftist dogmatism.

As Linantud describes the test case of the Philippines, The domestic obstacles to nation-

building were considerable, starting with a political culture of democratically elected caudillos,

private armies, and corruption that belied central government authority and produced inequalities

of power and wealth as egregious as any in East and Southeast Asia (Linantud, 2008, 648).

With endemic corruption rampant in the Philippines, under the watchful guise of the Americans,

they swiftly landed Ferdinand Marcos into the office of the Filipino presidency. Marcos, who

was anti-leftist, was thoroughly authoritarian and for a while seemed appropriate to assert his

authority to wipe out rampant corruption, getting the Philippines into at least a modicum of

economic growth and security and Marcos declared martial law in 1972. To rebuild the

Philippines and assert his nationalist credentials, Marcos closed the legislature, purged

conservative elites and private armies, enlarged the military, appointed technocrats to manage the

economy, built heritage sites at Second World War battlefields, and leveraged more aid from

Washington in return for basing rights. Even so, Philippine dependence on US aid trailed the

other three more strategically placed states until the 1980s (Linantud, 2008, 650). But history

has a way of repeating itself and the endemic corruption that had the Filipino economy so


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stagnant was just as rife in Marcos regime. All bets were lost when his wife Imelda Marcos,

became the governor of Metro Manila and the shoe debacle became apparent.

In conclusion, Linantud states that all states were foreign policy destinations for the United

States, that each country geopolitically had its own sort of ramifications. Linantud says the

maxim ofmany Cold War theorists, that war makes states, if its the only incentive to be

productive and engage in nation-building, leads to mass civilian upset and discontent. This is

true especially if the very reason for the state is to provide security and goods and services

becomes just lip service and the state squanders the chance to deliver much needed initiatives to

experience growth and have ease among the populace.

al-Jarrah, Abdullah. Cullingford, Cedric. 2007. The Concept of Democracy: MuslimViews. Political Studies Association. 27. pp. 16-23.

In The Concept of Democracy: Muslim Views, al-Jarrah and Cullingford delve into the

prospects of democracy in the Middle East that is truly emblematic of what the needs and the

aspirations of what the lay Middle Easterner expects from the state. All of this is juxtaposed

with Islamic ideals when it comes to democratic policy and though written in 2007, this article

delivers a concurring view of what the Arab world in particular expect when it comes to reform

incentives and societal reforms.

In a region languishing under austere dictatorships, the notion of democracy elicits visions of

the most fundamental of rights and association: freedom and liberty. And many tend to believe

in the Muslim world that the American conception of democracy has led to disasters, chiefly like

the one in Iraq and that state-led Nationalistic sentiments rule legitimately. In an independent

study among Jordanians in college, participants were asked for their opinions and reactions

towards the word democracy. Most of the participants instantaneously wrote down King


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Abdullah, the Hashemite king of Jordan. In their views, the king, powerful and as sovereign as

he is, is wise enough and expeditious enough to confer power to subordinates and subjects. 373

wrote down the term colonization, citing the ruinous American legacy of the failed war in Iraq

as proof that colonialism under the American auspices of the supposed exporting of democracy

to an authoritarian state like Iraq was a manifold and blind act of aggression. Written in 2007 by

al-Jarrah and Cullingford, the gist of this article is the cultural disparity of the Middle East and

the US, exemplifying what anthropologists call cultural relativism; that of the generalizations

that come into mind of these participants whenever Western societal norms and mores are

discussed.

Bix, Herbert P. 2011. The North African Middle East Uprisings from Tunisia toLibya. The Massachusetts Review. pp. 329-347.

To begin, Bix makes the obvious statement of the US hegemony in the region. But with a

less than stellar record among the populations in the Middle East, the US must face a reckoning

of its own undertaking and acknowledge that many of its powers, both domestically and

internationally, are starting to become stymied. But far from being the sort of hegemon that can

dominate through latent force, it must continually fight costly air and ground wars. The

inconclusive character of these wars, and the decaying character of its domestic society and

economy, reveals a weakened, overextended power. Because of America's decade-long,

unending wars and occupations massive numbers of Muslim civilians have died, while the

productive sector of the US economy has steadily contracted (Bix, 2011, 329). With the US

taking an active role in many instances in mustering up support for democratization in the region,

advocacy of this sort of governance comes with its own sort of costs and in terms of the

influence game being played by Washington, the US must take each formative step towards


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democracy in the region while maintaining a semblance of order back home. In this article, Bix

is contextualizing the American and other European involvement in the region and provides

context in terms of post-WWII influence in the region, which he readily concedes is contingent

upon oil reserves and revenues. With the necessity of Arab nationalism to make imperialists

look repressive and contradictory to Arab values, the emergence of dictatorships in the Arab

world had its underpinnings with pan-Arabism, an idea first advocated by Gamel Abdel Nasser

of Egypt.

Glancing ahead to more contemporary times of the 21st

century, what triggered the mass

repudiation of the malaise and discontent with rulers in the Arab world was the self-immolation

of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia. Defeated and spent, he relented in front of the face of the

world to make the most significant act by a man who had no idea what the implications of his

suicide would mean. Soon after, Ben Ali, Tunisias premier, left into exile to Saudi Arabia,

leaving Tunisia to come to an aspiring democracy, albeit with a moderate Islamic party.

During the writing of this article, Mubaraks regime was ousted however Gaddafis power

was not yet over. Foreboding as it is written, its a cautionary tale of the Muslim Brotherhood in

Egypt making significant gains electorally and writing many self-serving provisions in the

Egyptian constitution. In Bixs view, the sovereignty exercised by nations to coming to

decisions about their own state is and should be completely beyond the purview of the US.

Safieddine, Assem. Atwi, Leila. 2009. Is Governance a Prerequisite for Democracy?Insights from the Middle East. Middle East Policy. 16. pp. 85-100

In keeping pace with the phenomenon of globalization, Safieddine and Atwi write in a

fashion that is more emblematic of the necessities of issues that should be addressed by

democratization. Chiefly, a republic is compared with corporations and the average citizen


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should be privileged to be shareholders in the dialogue of the state. Much alike with Wiarda

even though written in this century, democratic principles experienced a revivification with new

constructs such as preparedness, markets harmonizing with the government with the state

making the concrete steps towards emancipating many of the less fortunate to share in the fruits

of the market, private property rights, poverty alleviation and broader access to education.

What are the hindrances to democracy having footing in the Arab world? Safieddine and Atwi

remark that given cultural constructs, rampant graft and passive obedience to the state,

oftentimes the impulse to protest against the government by the civilian population is never even

conceptualized as being a valid reality, much less a safe attempt to do so. In terms of the civic

culture dynamic that Wiarda had mentioned earlier, this is almost nonexistent in the Arab

world. They cite Adrian Leftwichs definition of what good governance means: some or all of

the following features: an efficient public service; an independent judicial system and legal

framework to enforce contracts; the accountable administration of public funds; an independent

public auditor, responsible to a representative legislature; respect for the law and human rights at

all levels of government; a pluralistic institutional structure and a free press2 (Safieddine, Atwi,

2009, 87).

Safieddine and Atwi cite that Arab governments were ready to incentivize in the means

of which the masses became educated and they readily acknowledge the progress made towards

compulsory education for children and university enrollment as being tantamount towards the

sort of drive to have an educated populace, something which democracy is restive upon.

With these attributes, the next move, as the authors put it, is an eventuality waiting to

happen which is being ushered in incrementally by reforms and then by nascent democracy.

2Adrian Leftwich, Governance, Democracy and Development in the Third World, Third World Quarterly,

Vol. 14, No. 3, 1993, p. 605.


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Corruption and graft, which dictate so much of the commerce and transactions of the Arab states,

should be cast aside as something of a bygone era and transparency in the government is the

realistic thing to do. This is squarely in conjunction with the democratic values that most in the

West have got a consensus on.

Doran, Michael Scott. 2011. The Heirs of Nasser. Foreign Affairs. 90. pp. 17-25.In the contemporary world today, we must never have misgivings about people coming to

one accord about issues. But this article written by Doran emphasizes the individual effort by

one man, Gamal Abdel Nasser, to make the inception of pan-Arabism a credible mode of thought

even to this day in the Arab world. What was present in this man was the sort of dynamism and

the personification of ideals embodied in him that made him stand out among his

contemporaries. The necessity to make Arab sovereignty a viable issue amidst strife with

European imperialists made Nasser a cause celebre in the Arab world. In 1955, with the Suez

Crisis going on, in which Britain, France, Israel and the US on one side and Egypt, bolstered by

the USSR in the other, Nasser emerged triumphant due to a stroke of luck not envisaged by the

coalition forces of Israel and the West. Riding on the coattails of victory, Nasser encouraged his

Arab compatriots to shake off imperialism and the West and come to one accord about what he

saw the inherent right of the Arab peoples for self-determination. However much immortalized

in history, there is no longer any Nasser now and the need of the Arab world to come to its

senses is necessary in order for it to come to terms with procuring civilian sponsored statehood

and for the mandate of these populations to make the most out of their current state of affairs.


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Osanloo, Arzoo. 2008. Whence the Law: The Politics of Womens Rights, RegimeChange, and the Vestiges of Reform in the Islamic Republic or Iran. Radical History

Review. 101. pp. 42-58.

Its on everybodys minds these days; amidst an election year in the US and a pliant media

garnering supposed support for the extension of the War On Terror towards the Islamic Republic

of Iran. With a fatigued and dispirited military, the US could ill afford to wage war against Iran

because of the numerous policy pitfalls as well as the crossing over into a war that theres no

turning back from. However in this article, written by Arzoo Osanloo, a womanist perspective

on the possible reforms that would be passed by theMajlis, or otherwise known as the National

Iranian Legislature, is in focus here as well as procuring for Iranian women the same level of

dignity and status of Iranian men. Osanloo had written this article in conjunction with her work

at the Center for Womens Participation in Iran. Reminiscing on the year of 2005, Osanloo and

her female coworkers muse on the candidacy of the new Iranian President, Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad and the prospects for any reforms for women at the time. Given the presidency of

the reformist Khatami earlier who was more than willing to defer rights to women, in keeping

with the pace and the spirit of reform, Osanloo has now gotten her answer that the hardliners at

the top who dictate electoral outcomes in Iran, will do their best to stymie the rights of women

there. With Khomeinis revolution in the 1970s, the idea prevalent throughout Iran at the time

was that the feminist movement was an elitist Western bourgeois motif, and that the dignity of

Iranian women would best be served as a domicile. Osanloo concludes that in conjunction with

the Supreme Ayatollahs rendition of what the rights of Iranian women are under Islamic law

isnt as cumbersome as most in the West believe it to be and that women fare much better there

than in more austerely Islamic theocracies. In a region that for decades had Western style


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emancipation for women, the abrupt turnaround to heavy handedness when it came to womens

rights was a total surprise. However Osanloo is positive about the prospects of women there and

believes that there will there be an easement when it comes to the sort of regime change there.

Summation

This literature review, I believe, has produced an adequate number of peer-reviewed sources

and is compliant with the nature of the theme of regime changes and democratization trends

globally, specifically post-WWII. From the viewpoint of Wiarda and Leftwich, the definition of

democracy and its attributes have experienced a revamping and thus the maxim is true, that

democracy is a work in progress. In the study of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal and the

last vestiges of Francos regime working towards democratization in these central-authority

fascist states, we get a picture of the Third Wave as Huntington had put it, and weve also

managed to see Portugal as a state taking it upon itself to lend a helping hand to the market.

Given that Spain and Portugal are in the European Union presently, the availability of funds and

capital is the necessary means for these two countries survival in the supranationalistic EU.

Weve taken a look at Rhees South Korea, in which popular student rebellion got rid of an

unpopular and scathingly repressive regime who had resorted to killing en masse its own citizens

simply for having reactionary political views. And weve gotten insights into prospective

democratization in the Middle East from a society that is vastly different from the West as can

be, that has experienced mass discontent in terms of the sort of governance practiced by those in

power. What happens there now is a matter to be decided now distinctly through diplomatic

channels and its heartening to know that at least now there is dialogue going on in Syria. From

the meddling of the US in terms of geopolitical matters in the policy of containment to the now


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much more humane advocacy of democracy through diplomacy and NGOs, it remains to be seen

what all of this is going to culminate into. But as a student of governance and international

relations, among my fellow collegiates, the consensus is that something very significant and

compelling has to happen to make things fare for the better and the de-escalation of tensions

needs to happen rather quickly.

Conclusion

Ever since I was young, I was a voracious reader and even at a tender age, the world was

within reach due to the prevalence of media. At the time, I had ingested the Western press as the

authoritative voice when it had come to the reporting of events and in my naivet, never had I

imagined that there would be an inequity when it came to the reporting of the news. I knew

however, that sensationalizing a story and embellishing it is how the dollars roll in. But with the

intensity and the velocity with which mass media, whether it be a liberal or conservative outlet,

spins a story and makes it digestible to the masses is a bit unnerving. And as this relates to the

influence game played in Washington with many incentives at stake during an election year, one

has to be aware of the sort of implications that come into focus if one candidate wins and a

decision to go to war is the then worthwhile objective of that certain administration.

All of the test cases in this literature review have an intuitive relation as per associative

actions vis--vis the US. Citing the US as the chief hegemon in power is not at all a hyperbolic

statement, but the sort of hubris that comes with it has engendered much enmity among diverse

peoples and nations in the world. As this relates to the world of comparative politics and

international relations, there has never been a better time to be watchful and contemplative when

it comes to these forays into unknown territory that has far-reaching implications for the US as a

country for generations to come. The Ugly American by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer


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represents the ideal of American foreign policy in other countries based upon the sense of

brotherhood and viable and better alternatives to communism. But the US can no longer hide the

fact that its interests in the world are largely self-serving. If that doesnt change in near future,

and Im not at all advocating a reactionary stance against the US, then the balance of power will

start to shift and other players who are much more conciliatory towards host countries will take

that mandate from the US. In the regime changes and democratization trends described in this

literature review, all or most of these countries at one time or another had become partners with

the US and established a rapport with the US. But the US now has the onerous decisions to

make regarding which regime shift they want to get behind and which to deftly avoid. And since

were in whats been called the Fourth Wave, the US has to make that decision very soon.


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Works Cited

1. Wiarda, Howard. 1990. Democracy and Democratization from Authoritarianism, (ED)Non-Western Theories of Development. Orlando, FL. Harcourt Brace, pp. 100-119.

2.

Fishman, Robert M. 2010. Rethinking the Iberian Transformations: HowDemocratization Scenarios Shaped Labor Market OutcomesSpringer Science+Business

Media, pp. 281-310.

3. Kim, Quee-Young. June 1996. From Protest to Change of Regime: The 4-19 Revoltand The Fall of the Rhee Regime in South Korea. Social Forces 74:4. The University of

North Carolina Press. pp. 1179-1209.

4. Fox, Jonathan A. 1990. The Challenge of Rural Democratisation: Perspectives fromLatin America and the Philippines. The Journal of Development Studies. Reprint

Series, Center for Global, International UC Santa Cruz. 26(4). pp. 1-18.

5. Linantud, John L. 2008. Pressure and Protection: Cold War Geopolitics and Nation-Building in South Korea, South Vietnam, Philippines, and Thailand. Geopolitics. 13.pp. 635-656.

6. al-Jarrah, Abdullah. Cullingford, Cedric. 2007. The Concept of Democracy: MuslimViews. Political Studies Association. 27. pp. 16-23.

7. Bix, Herbert P. 2011. The North African Middle East Uprisings from Tunisia toLibya. The Massachusetts Review. pp. 329-347.

8. Safieddine, Assem. Atwi, Leila. 2009. Is Governance a Prerequisite for Democracy?Insights from the Middle East. Middle East Policy. 16. pp. 85-1009. Doran, Michael Scott. 2011. The Heirs of Nasser. Foreign Affairs. 90. pp. 17-25.10.Osanloo, Arzoo. 2008. Whence the Law: The Politics of Womens Rights, Regime

Change, and the Vestiges of Reform in the Islamic Republic or Iran. Radical HistoryReview. 101. pp. 42-58.

independent study on democratization presently and during 20th century

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